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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24869515">Rapacity</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall'>misreall</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bad Ethics, Biting, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, COVID-19, Character Turned Into Vampire, Coronavirus, Covid related story, Eating, F/M, Finger Sucking, Fucking, Hand &amp; Finger Kink, Human/Vampire Relationship, Invasion of Privacy, Kissing, Memory Alteration, Murder, Oral Sex, Pandemic - Freeform, Questionable Consent, Regret, Rough Oral Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Vampire Bites, Vampire Feeding, Vampire Loki, Vampire Sex, Vampire Turning, Violence, Wet Dream, Writing, dream walking, shelter in place</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:35:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>55,333</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24869515</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A woman is forced during the Shelter in Place to find a new way to pay her rent.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1295</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>686</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. That’s what comes of hungering for something; you forget to check if it’s rotten before you gobble it down  -  Holly Black</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>My bank has a surprisingly cheerful app for something that offers nothing but depression and pain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sunny yellow, not aggressive or blaring, like police line yellow which would be more appropriate.  It has a nice font, and uses pleasant, fun sort of language that implies they hired a firm of young, hip yet sincere people to create it for them.  I can picture them in their open floor plan office space, dressed in cool outfits with oddly colored shoes.  The men would all have interesting facial hair.  The women would all have amazing eyeglasses.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They confer for hours to make this the best banking app in the world, so user friendly that even when you peek at your devastatingly grim financial reality you would still find yourself admiring the quality of the interface.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was some good news.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I could pay my rent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was some bad news.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t afford luxuries.  Like the phone I was using to look at my bank account.  Or possibly food.  Especially delivered groceries since with my asthma I was afraid to go out at all.  At least I wouldn’t have to worry about the other utilities for several more months.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Covid had stolen my job, and I had only finally waited out the virtual lines and automatic hang-ups to collect unemployment after a month of trying, but that time had destroyed my savings and nerves.  The hole I was in financially was turning out to be six feet deep and coffin-shaped.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Walking around my kitchen, phone in hand, I looked over to the massive Victorian house where my landlord lived.  I drank black, unsweetened coffee that had gone tepid on me, and then tapped the edge of the little china cup against my lower teeth.  The high, </span>
  <em>
    <span>chinging </span>
  </em>
  <span>noise reverberated through my head, and my stomach clenched and growled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At three in the morning, the lights were on and my landlord was certainly up.  Even before the Shelter in Place caused time to have no meaning he would have been awake.  Laufeyson claimed to be a writer, and clearly came from money. That kind of privilege and scorn was bred in the bone over generations.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could afford to live a nocturnal lifestyle, and one of the few times he’d bothered to speak to me had said the only way he could work was knowing everyone else was asleep and couldn’t potentially disturb him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had told me all of this when he handed over the keys to the apartment over the massive garage that had once been a coach house.  “If you are rich and don’t like to be disturbed why are you renting out this place for so little?”  The price was low enough that he couldn’t have been making much if anything from the rent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peering at me from over his black-framed glasses, which he idly pushed up with his middle finger, he answered, “My inherently altruistic nature.”  His deep, resonant voice was perfectly bland.  “Also, I expect us to leave each other alone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Who knew green eyes could be so cold?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Living there for a year I had only properly seen him maybe once or twice a month even though we lived just a garden apart.  He had made it very clear that he wasn’t interested in chatting with his tenant over coffee.  On the few times I would be sitting outside reading or passing him coming or going he seemed to begrudge even answering my wave or greetings.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I know I saw him roll his eyes at least once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps he found me repellent.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I didn’t need the approval of my landlord, and as long as I paid on time and didn’t bother him I wasn’t concerned about his feelings.  All that mattered to me was having a place to live.  That it was hidden behind his large, ornate house, and the trees that sheltered it, that it was solid and safe, and came with no neighbors, those were all good things as well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I valued my privacy as much as Laufeyson did, though I suspected for different reasons.  He was worried that he would be bothered too much, while I liked to give myself the illusion that I was solitary rather than merely lonely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When I had seen him it was when he would be coming in with one of the beautiful creatures - female, male, both, and neither, every colour, size, and sometimes in pairs, he seemed to have no preference other than they were gorgeous - he brought home.  Rarely the same one more than twice, they flitted in from his vintage Jag late, late at night, and most would walk of shame it to the curb for a waiting Uber to take them home in the morning, looking demolished and moony-eyed.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most would.  Every now and then one of them must have either left in the middle of the night, or after I left for my morning run, because I wouldn’t see them leaving.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Twice a week - Tuesdays and Thursdays - regular as clockwork.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Until the Shelter in Place, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I watched him sometimes, not on date nights, the other ones.  I’m not proud and I knew when I was doing it that it was wrong.  His office faced my apartment and some nights when he wrote I would turn out my lights and watch. It was easier when the trees were bare, yet even through the heart and heat of summer there was something more vivid about him than most people  He shone, perhaps darkly, but he shone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even across the distance of the garden, I would see him.  He would type steadily, getting up from time to time to find a book on one of the wooden shelves that lined the bit of the well-appointed room that I could see.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He would pace back and forth, and every now and then when he seemed stuck, he would leave the room and step out onto the little, decorative balcony and smoke.  Just one cigarette.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And I would think he must be from somewhere freezing because even in the dead of winter he wouldn’t bother with a coat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yeah, I watched him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just because he found me repellent didn’t mean I found him so.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Did I mention that he was more beautiful than any of them?  Tall, and elegant, slim yet broad-shouldered, always dressed exquisitely, with his long, black hair pulled back in a plait, he was intimidating as hell, even without his sculpturally perfect features.  I don’t know where he was from, his accent was odd and he certainly never offered up anything personal on those few occasions when he hadn’t been able to avoid talking to me…..</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I knew I wouldn’t sleep until this was resolved, so I knew I was going to have break the implicit rule of my residency.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Putting on my mask and a jacket, I crossed the darkened garden.  It was just starting to turn green again.  Laufeyson never spent much time in it but he paid to have it seen to and it was nearly as beautiful as he was, even in the winter when berries red as blood dotted the black branches of some of the thornbushes, glimmering in the snow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thought of talking to anyone after so long made me nervous, I was already awkward enough and now I was out of practice pretending to not be a freak.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I went around to the front.  He didn’t strike me as someone who had grown up in a house where everyone used the back door, like they did in my family.  There was a formality to him, maybe it was a European thing, or a money thing, or just a him thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The doorbell had a dignified bong that echoed and after a few seconds I heard firm, hard-soled shoe steps coming downstairs.  I stepped back so there would be six feet between us.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even though it was three in the morning he was wearing a black, clearly expensive suit, although he’d taken off the jacket and rolled up the white sleeves of his dress shirt his vest was still buttoned and his tie still perfect.  It was a bit loose on him, which shocked me, he no longer looked lean.  He looked thin.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though he was still beautiful, it made him look alien.  As if paring down to the hard, exact planes of bone and cartilage had brushed away the illusion that he was made of the same clay as the rest of us.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His eyes narrowed, “Laurel?  Is something the matter?”  There was no surprise in his voice, only a little concern, which in turn left me surprised.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I … I should have called … I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was shaking.  Nerves.  Low blood sugar.  The still cold of early April.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hadn’t spoken directly to another person in over a month.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t like me. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had nowhere to go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rather than rolling his eyes or dismissing me, he reached out and took my arm, “You are shivering like a waif in some ridiculous bit of melodrama.  Come inside.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But-”  I started to jerk back, but his long fingers held me easily.  Even skinny he was strong and I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched me, so I found myself staring at his hand.  It was large, with knobby, slightly reddened knuckles.  They were endearingly normal.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wanted to stroke them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Neither of us has seen a living soul in ages.  We are safe from the current pestilence,” he said as a statement and not a theory.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Within a few moments I was sitting in his living room, where the furniture was period correct Victorian antiques but without the fussiness of that time. Like its owner, the house was pared down to the essential.  Yet the walls were painted red and the floor was thick with what seemed to be layers of carpets. “Here,” he pressed a glass into my hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If his fingertips seemed to linger a bit over my as he slid his hand away it was certainly all in my head.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The house smelled of candle wax, and it was cold.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Running my palms over the cut crystal, I closed my eyes to better enjoy the smell of the peat and fire from the whiskey.  The small sip I took gave my throat a fiery ache.  When my eyes opened I saw him leaning forward on the Morris chair across from me, his long legs rather wide.  There was a cold avidity in those eyes, and something almost lewd in the way he sat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are quite the sensualist.  I’m surprised.  Now,” he leaned back, “what brings you here so late?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s about the rent-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He chuckled, just once, “Is it the first already?  Yes, I suppose it is.  Is Venmo not working?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t pay it.  Or I can, but I was hoping for an extension.  Two weeks.  I can be caught up a little.  Or maybe I can give you half now and half then.  I,” I took a deep breath and another perfect sip, trying to also remember how long it had been since I’d had a drink, “I need to buy food.  I’m out of food.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For how long?” he asked.  Leaned back as he was the low light from the one amber shaded lamp reflected on his glasses and hid his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Two weeks,” now I leaned forward, eager, “and no more, I’ll-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I meant how long have you been out of food?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” I felt myself blush, “entirely out?  Only today.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you have not been eating properly for some time now, yes?  I can see it.  There is a shadow under your eyes, that looks tender, like a bruise, and your hands have a small, weak tremble.  A few sips of liquor has blood flushing your cheek, like a virgin from an old book.  It would probably burn my fingers to stroke you there, so deep is the pink.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His voice was dark, and the words made me swallow, hard, convulsive.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I pressed my thighs together, hoping he wouldn’t notice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I took a sip to hide my mouth.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry, Mr. Laufeyson, about all this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Loki.  Mr. Laufeyson makes me feel old enough to be your father.”  He laughed again, this time three distinct huffs, “I can assure you that I am nowhere near his age, whatever it may be.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Loki.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though it seemed like a silly name it wasn’t.  It felt right in my mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Though it surprises me to say it, it appears we have something in common - other than keeping peculiar hours and sharing an address,” he stood and walked over to the long, velvet sofa I sat on.  Rather than sitting he stood in front of me.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His shoes were black oxfords, gleaming with polish and very long.  As close as he was I was afraid to look up at him, knowing that my eyes would have to trace every inch of him before reaching his face.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have also been… doing without proper, regular nutrition.  Let alone the little treats we give ourselves to make life worth bothering with.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I felt drunk, or at least as if I were on the edge of being so, which is why when he first touched my hair I thought I was imagining things.  Then he started to run his fingers through my hair.  I sighed and fought to keep from leaning forward so my cheek would rest on his suited thigh.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I believe we can be of significant assistance to each other,” though he touched me with care his voice was clinical.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His gently petting hand turning into a fist, grasping my hair so he could pull my head back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Far back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just enough to hurt, but not so much it didn’t feel good, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He leaned over me, his eyes still hidden, smiling so one corner of his mouth lifted enough to show a glistening fang descending.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he bit me I did not scream.  I wanted to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But not from fear or pain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m O negative…  If it matters,” I slurred.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He extricated his fangs with great care, not leaving tears around the perfect holes, and then laughed against my skin as he lapped.</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.-  George Orwell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Laurel wakes up.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>I had never passed out before, so when I woke or rather, came around, for the first few moments I was disoriented.  Dizziness overtook me the second I opened my eyes, and I closed them against the nausea.  Even though I was on my back I was certain I was going to fall as the world spun beneath me, weakly one way, and then the other, like a top that had finished it’s whirl and lay on its side rocking itself slower and slower until stopping.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When it finally stilled, I waited a few breaths before trying again.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This time, though I was still ill, and weak, I was no longer overwhelmed with vertigo.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All of that aside, opening my eyes left me no less disoriented as I had no idea where I was.  I did know that I was on a bed in what I assumed had to be a bedroom.  It was very dark.  One standing lamp was lit across the room, but it’s dark amber glass shade did very little to give real light.  All it seemed to do was make the polished wood of the heavy furniture glow.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I pushed down to try and sit up and was surprised to find the bed was covered in fur, not blankets.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The silky tickle of it made me jump and I was on my feet, and then holding onto one of the bed’s four-posters for dear life as the ground began to pitch and sway again.  My head started to pound as well.  Not just hurt, I had gotten used to that as I ate less and less each day for the last week, but this was a painless, yet hard throb in my pulse and temples.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I had managed to get myself seated on the bed again, leaning against the post to keep myself from slumping over, when the door opened.  My mouth was so dry I felt like if I were to lick my lips my tongue would make them bleed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rather than flooding the room with light, it was dark enough beyond that door to momentarily make the room dimmer, if that were possible.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Either that or I was about to pass out again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, you’re up.  Good.  Then you will most certainly recover.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I remembered now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>My landlord was a vampire.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>My landlord was a vampire and I was in a bedroom in his house.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>My landlord was a vampire and I was in a bedroom in his house after he had drunk my blood.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If I had been less sick and weak, and certain I would fall over, I might have made an idiot out of myself by trying to scramble backward on the bed, or get up and run or who knows what?  As it was, I dully tried to process all of that while reaching up to stroke my throat where he had bitten me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rather than touching skin, my fingertips found cloth - something fine and smooth - that seemed to be wound snugly but not too snugly, around my neck.  “My apologies for the improvised bandage.  I was out of Band-aids and since I have not had any guests in some time now I saw no reason to refill my supply.  A foolish economy, it would seem.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laufeyson set a few things on the nightstand, and then crouched before me, a tight frown between his cool eyes, his thin lips curled up at one corner as he considered me.  “You lied to me, Laurel.  I rather think it had been longer between meals than you let on.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then that curl of his lip went up just a fraction higher, and the opposite brow matched it, though his eyes remained cold.  “Not that I haven’t made more than a few mortals who were not weak with hunger swoon.  But that generally takes me using my mouth more liberally than I did on you.  Eat.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Uhmmm?”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I would like to have said something clever, or something that was more than a vocable.  Hunger, confusion, blood loss, and shock made that impossible.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shaking his head, a look of annoyance crossing his face, he stood and picked something up from the tray and pressed it into my hands before wiping his own fastidiously on a napkin - a cloth napkin - before he sprawled gracefully backward into a sitting position, one knee bent, the other stretched out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Looking down I found myself holding a double handful of crackers and a few olives.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It felt good to look down, it eased some of the discomfort in my head.  It was much harder to look up.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a barest shrug from him, “Why would you expect me to have food?”  Then he laughed, “Well, food other than you?” he languidly gestured, “Those are left from a cocktail party I threw around Christmas.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not being able to think of another way to do it, I lifted my hands to my mouth and got a bit of broken, stale cracker and two of the olives.  The crackers were so dry they hurt my equally dry mouth to eat but the olives.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, the olives.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The salty fat of them made me ravenous and even though the brine stung my dry lips I couldn’t get enough of them.  I found myself biting into the straight from my hands, chewing, my eyes closed so I could savour their flesh, tease out that little, slick bit of pimento.  When they were gone I let the rest of the crackers fall away from my palms that I then licked clean.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Reaching over, I picked up the saucer they had been on and cleaned that as well, pressing the tip of my tongue to each perfect, jewel-like drop so it would melt into my mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What a barbaric performance,” Laufeyson’s voice invaded my privacy, “But then, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>are</span>
  </em>
  <span> a Midwesterner by birth, as I recall from your rental application.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When I opened my eyes he was leaning his elbow on his bent knee, so he could rest his chin on the palm of his hand and study me.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Water?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He frowned, and then gestured with his head to the table.  A martini glass and a shaker sat there, frosted with condensation.  “Even I wouldn’t feed you gin after whiskey.  It’s water.  My last houseguest enjoyed martinis and pretending he was a film character of some sort.  All of the rest of my glassware is dusty.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I drained the glass and then took the top off of the shaker and drained that, too.  Despite how the cold water was making me a little sick, it and that tiny bit of food made me less dizzy.  Though if anything I was hungrier.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laufeyson stood and looked down at the mess I had made with the crackers.  “You can clean that tomorrow night.  Go to sleep.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Standing was difficult, more so because when I did he laid one of his fingertips between my eyes and so very gently pushed me back.  As I fell, warm, almost too warm, darkness oozed into my mind even as I was cushioned by silken fur, “I meant here.  You’ll break your neck trying the stairs as you are now.”  His dark, sonorous voice grew fainter, “I prefer to eat my meals hot.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then I was gone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Pain woke me the second time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After his fangs reopened the nearly healed wound they’d made before, which hurt more the second time than I remember them hurting the first, my body stiffened, my fight or flight instincts trapped in my now locked muscles.  If I moved too much those teeth would tear me open.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I’m sure I made some kind of noises, I know I couldn’t speak, not wanting to move even that much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gave a low, ratcheting chuckle, like the sound of a chain slowly unspooling, link by heavy, cold link.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because he was still in me I felt that laugh rumble down my veins, my nerves, in my lungs which were heaving slightly.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As if</span>
  <em>
    <span> I </span>
  </em>
  <span>were laughing.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes laughing caused me to have an asthma attack - which seemed unfair since exercise didn’t. It had turned me into a sullen bore who owned too many pairs of running shoes.  I missed laughing.  I wish I missed exercise instead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Though my asthma was mild, it was still frightening sometimes, and I hadn’t brought my rescue inhaler or been able to refill my steroid inhaler a while. Maybe it was how tired I still was, or how weak, but the idea that the vampire who was feeding from me was going to kill me by triggering an asthma attack struck me as deeply funny.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So I did start to laugh.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which made him stop.  In fact, he froze as still as I had.  No, far stiller, since he wasn’t breathing, I realized.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which, for whatever reason, made me laugh harder.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Weak, helpless, snorting laughter.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I was going to die here, on this big, comfortable bed, in the arms of a beautiful man who saw me as food, from </span>
  <em>
    <span>asthma!  </span>
  </em>
  <span>Staring at the high, coffered ceiling I tried to calm down, to stop myself, all of which made me panic.  The laughter growing worse, and my breathing along with it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry, sorry,” I managed to wheeze out my chest tight and starting to almost burn.  “I have trouble brea-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A long-fingered hand covered my eyes as he gently removed his teeth from my throat.  His skin was cool, not cold, and the flesh was hard, as if he worked with those hands.  There was something so peaceful about having him hide my eyes for me that my breathing started to ease.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shhhh…” he whispered against the wound.  “Shhhh … don’t fret now … be still, sweetheart, be still … just a few little sips … just enough to wet my lips with the taste of you, a few drops of you and then you can rest….”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His voice was so tender, and I was so weak I sobbed, a few tears wetting his hand and one rolling down my temple.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A tongue flickering fast as a snake licked its trail, “Ummm … I wonder if there is any part of you that doesn’t taste like nectar?”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then he sucked.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His mouth was eloquent even when not speaking.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lovely, long draws that I felt through my body, as if I were being rubbed over with velvet.  It was like that point before an orgasm before the desperate need to come overwhelmed you and pinned all of the pleasure and ache in your body between your legs.  That small, almost missable moment when your entire body feels - that ecstatic moment when nothing feels bad, when you are almost done climbing and the gorgeousness of it floods you.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His hand skimmed down my face.  It seemed warmer when it brushed the tip of my nose, trailed over my lips - my tongue darted out to try and lick his fingertips and he laughed a bit again when I missed - then barely touched the front of my throat, before settling on my sternum.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even through my shirt I could feel how warm, how almost hot, his touch was now as he tenderly rubbed circles there with the heel of his hand.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At some point, probably a lot sooner than I realized, the suckling stopped, leaving me exhausted and limp, though I wasn’t much better than that before he started.  Rather than leaving right away, he stayed like that, soothing my chest, his forehead against my temple. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are a rather peculiar woman, aren’t you Laurel?  Laurel,” he said my name in a long drawl….</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I could barely keep my eyes open.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The last thing I saw before they closed again, was him leaning up on his hand so he could look at my face.  An almost-smile on his face.  “I think you are too curious a creature to waste on an early morning snack.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The next time I woke it was near dawn - and I promise there is more to this story than me passing out and waking up, though I can see why you might worry about that - I was on the tiny landing outside of my garage apartment, wrapped in a fur throw, with a large smoothie and an envelope by my head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the next stair down there were two grocery bags.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Though still incredibly weak I felt fine otherwise.  No headache, no tightened chest, just a little chilly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I lifted my head enough to get my mouth on the straw.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Semi-frozen yoghurt, fruit, and green tea had never tasted so good.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time I finished it I was able to sit up and watch the sunrise over Laufeyson’s house before getting myself unwrapped and bringing the groceries in.  My mind wasn’t really engaged in any of this.  It felt like it had been wrapped in cotton and set in a high shelf for safekeeping, until I had the strength to give real thought to what the fuck had just happened to me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I slowly ate an incredibly juicy pear that I found in one of the bags, leaving my mouth and hand sticky.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, I opened the envelope.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a new lease and a note.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>I can say, with some authority, that my shout of outrage was not quite loud enough to raise the dead.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. “The appetite is sharpened by the first bites.” - Jose Rizal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A legal document is looked at and dinner is served.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> Tremendously cool art by @dianamolloy</p><p>I am not insane.  </p><p>I guess that you think I must be, after having read all of that.  Knowing that I was going hungry, was sheltering in place alone, without work or even going out to the store now and then, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to think it sent me over the edge.</p><p>Imagining teeth all of the way down.</p><p>I’d believe it of myself, if I were in your place.  That I accepted it so quickly, rather than shrieking and running around saying, “There is no such thing as vampires!” has to seem unlikely, even for someone who you are convinced has lost their mind.  But with the loneliness and the hunger and the whiskey and then the bite, I was too far into the whole thing, and in a kind of altered state, so I was past the stage of any reasonable denial by the time I was in good enough shape to deny anything.</p><p>But what truly convinced me that I hadn’t just had a kinky, borderline non-consensual, run-in with a gorgeous pervert while nearly dreaming was my new, handwritten lease.  Not the terms - which, by the way, were entirely illegal and unenforceable, if not actionable, - or the fact that I had signed it, even though I couldn’t remember doing it.  </p><p>Signed it in something that clearly wasn’t ink and was a very ugly shade of reddish-brown.</p><p>I sat, and drank and drank, my body needing that disgusting smoothie so badly that I chewed the straw open to get every last drop while I read.  </p><p>Laufeyson’s handwriting was impossibly neat, so much so that it looked typeset.  The sight of those perfectly formed and legible letters gave me a chill.  What was more, he had written out all of the boilerplate from a standard rental lease by hand, two pages worth, so that while instead of providing him with $1400 a month I was providing him with up to but not exceeding a pint of my blood every ten days, I was still not allowed to have a pet or paint any of the rooms without prior approval by the building owner.</p><p>All written in legalese what I then noticed wasn’t <em> merely </em> a perfect hand.  </p><p>With my hands shaking again, but this time not from hunger or exhaustion, I found my laptop next to my bed, ignored all of the current emails and social media alerts from my aunt and various friends, and former bandmates, so I could open my resume, which was the only document I had on it currently.  After fussing around with the toolbar for a few minutes I found what I was looking for.</p><p>Not just a perfect hand.  It was Arial.  Arial in ten points with identical kerning between each letter of each word.  Scanning word for word I couldn’t find a hesitation, smear, or blot anywhere.</p><p>I folded the two sheets smaller and smaller and smaller, as small as I could, all with those shaking hands.  There is a belief that you can only fold a piece of paper seven times, but I proved it wrong.</p><p>You may think that it’s further evidence of how crazy I am that it was that perfect writing that convinced me that Laufeyson was an unnatural creature and not the blood-drinking.  But stop and think about it.  Almost all of us have teeth and I am sure that there are dentists who will give you nice, sharp, usable fangs.  As far as the blood-drinking, while it would probably make most people sick, especially if you drank too much, anyone<em> can </em> do it.  </p><p>Hell, even vegans probably can’t make an argument against it if the donor consents.  </p><p>But no one could have created that document freehanded, and in what probably wasn’t much more than an hour.</p><p>The note, scrawled with an elegant sloppiness on an oversized post-it, just said, “See you on the 10th,  L.”</p><p>I wanted to crumple it up.  Or rummage around until I found matches and set it alight.  Or at least flush it down the toilet.</p><p>Instead, I found myself flipping my calendar to the correct month, and carefully pressing it over the empty box for the tenth of the month and then put away the food he’d gotten me from a fancy grocery store that I normally couldn’t afford.  </p><p>The choices were… eccentric.</p><p>A massive amount of kale and spinach, several bags of prunes, lentils, two dozen eggs, five pounds of extra lean beef stew meat, kidneys - which I nearly threw out but instead shoved in the back of the freezer, almonds, seven large bars of 99% dark chocolate, an enormous shaker of cinnamon, and another of cayenne pepper.</p><p>If the world had been in better order, and so was I, I might have looked for another apartment.  If my aunt hadn’t been elderly and in a high-risk category for Covid after decades of smoking, I might have even considered packing a bag and driving back to Chicago to face her cursing me the fuck out in return for being able to sleep at her place.  </p><p>If the world were in worse order, and so was I, I might have burned his place to the ground during the day, or broken in with a hatchet and some badly sharpened pieces of wood.  </p><p>But since the world and I were what we were, and I had money to spend, for those ten days I only jogged in the middle of the day and didn’t even open a window between sunrise and sunset, ordered more balanced groceries, made a lot of Mexican hot chocolate, and Googled ‘vampire,’ ‘Nosferatu,’ ‘the living dead, ‘Loki Laufeyson’, and, just for fun, ‘blood pacts.’</p><p>I’d say it wasn’t very comforting, but I have always hated understatement.  Especially when I read up on compulsion and vampire legends.  You know how addicts and alcoholics who know they are addicts and alcoholics still drink?  Knowing you are probably under a compulsion doesn’t make that go away, either.</p><p>I stopped looking out of the windows that faced the house, and he left me alone the whole time. </p><p>And ten days passed.</p><p> </p><p>On the tenth of the month, my stomach was in knots but I forced myself to eat.  I submitted my resume to ten more places, put up a meaningless message on social media so everyone who was trying to get me to contact them would know I was still alive and just being a bitch, and dug through my closet to find something presentable and clean since I had worked my way through almost all of my clothing rather than go to the laundromat, and then during the two weeks just hand-washed what I needed and hung it to dry over the radiator in the bathroom.  </p><p>I found a dress I used to wear back when… </p><p>Back when I did things.</p><p>When the sun went down I sat in the living room and waited, staring at nothing, trying not to go.  Telling myself I hadn’t worn those clothes for any reason.  I squeezed the arms of the chair I sat in to read until one of my fingernails broke through the pleather with an audible pop.  </p><p>Then I got a sweater and went to see if reality was about to kick back in or be permanently altered.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> If you remember those days - if you are old enough to - you probably remember how altered the world was.  That pure quiet where you could not even hear the ambient noise of planes that the unconscious mind filters out most of the time, and how clean the air was from the lack of cars.  There was a depth to the world that humanity had erased through its technology and noise that came back for a while.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The wind felt clean, or nearly so.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I had forgotten what that felt like, and how dark the sky could be.  It made me feel young, even whilst being so deeply aware of the years gone past. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>He was on the porch when I came around to the front of the house.  I don’t know if he was waiting for me or if it was just a coincidence.  Though it was cold - cold enough that my breath froze and I wished I had worn something warmer for even that little walk - Laufeyson stood there in nothing but suit pants and his dress shirt, which was untucked and had the sleeves rolled up.  I had never seen him so casual.</p><p>Though his clothing was… relaxed he stood at perfectly still attention, legs together, arms loose at his sides, with his head back so he could stare at the sky.  The only motion from him was when the wind caught a wisp of hair that had dared to come loose from his queue.  </p><p>No white puffs of breath clouded the air around him, and I wondered if I had not noticed him not breathing before or if he was just not bothering to pretend to breathe now since I already knew the truth.</p><p>And I also wondered if it would be as obvious to a passerby - if there were such, because of course the streets were empty other than a jogger whose light, spronging steps I could hear blocks away - as it was to me that he wasn't human.  </p><p>Stress and cold left me painfully tense, but I wasn’t afraid.  Fear tends to be a product of hope and uncertainty.  I didn’t feel the least little bit of hope of getting out of this.  It never even occurred to me.</p><p>As for uncertainty, I knew what was to come, so while I might say I felt some dread I there was nothing uncertain about my near future.  I knew everything that was to come.</p><p>I thought.</p><p>I am often very wrong about things.  You should know this about me by now, but if you don’t please keep it in mind.</p><p>Without looking towards me, he went to the front door and held it open, with the slightest bit of a bow, which did not look silly or like he was trying to be funny, it just came naturally to him though he’d never done it for me before.   </p><p>Close up, while he still looked thinner than what I guessed was normal, he wasn’t so gaunt.  </p><p>“You are looking better than the last time you were here.  Quite amazing what a few proper meals can do, is it not?”</p><p>On the assumption he could read my mind I sent him a few choice thoughts.  He smiled leeringly at me as I entered, though his eyes remained colder than the freezing air.  “No, I cannot hear your thoughts.  Or influence them.  Unduly.  Though you may find I invade them from time to time and it is for you to decide how I’m getting <em> in </em> there.”</p><p>Then the leer fell away, so only the bone-shaking cold of him remained.  “You are here of your own free will.  Well, that and the blood bond of the lease, which I did not coerce you into signing.  I am simply old enough to know that humans come in types, to know what those types tend to do or think at any given time, and to know how to influence them.  Manipulate, if you prefer,” he added, pointing me away from the living room, towards a closed door further down the hallway.  </p><p>I don’t know if he was trying to be offensive or if it was as natural a part of him as the green of those frozen eyes.  </p><p>Since it was only slightly warmer inside his house than outside I left my jacket on, “The<em> last </em> time I was here you said I was peculiar.”</p><p>“I was a little blood drunk that night, since it had been longer than I normally go between meals.  Even monsters tend to be enthusiastic at such times, overestimating the appeal of their companions.”</p><p>“You’re saying you had on blood goggles?”</p><p>He raised a brow and opened the door, not dignifying me with a response.</p><p>The room was the dining room.</p><p>I couldn’t help it, I laughed.</p><p>“Really?” I said.  “So should I just spread out on the credenza?  Or the table?  You’ll have to remove that silver centerpiece for me if it’s the table.  It looks heavy.”  </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> From the instant I had deposited my tenant- my preferred way to think of the woman if I were forced at all to think of her - and the food I had procured for her upon the stairs outside of the apartment she rented from me I had found myself confused as to why I had decided not to drain her dead all at once. </em>
</p><p><em> A meal of that size would keep me in fine fettle for months to come or more, as I recalled, though it had been ages since I had gorged in such a piggish manner.  </em> Smá diskar <em> , served from the veins of the loveliest, vainest, most easily led human </em> festa <em> to be had, were my food of choice.   </em></p><p>
  <em> Less mess, if nothing else.   </em>
</p><p><em> Two feedings per </em> festa <em> , no matter how winsome or tasty.  Or responsive.  Not that the last had interested me in many years.   </em></p><p>
  <em> The tenant was not ugly, but her serviceable looks were not up to my standards.  Indeed, I had chosen to rent to her for that very reason.  I have made it my practice to keep a rental property near my home, wherever it may be, as a sort of emergency larder.  When you are born in desolation you know the value of a full cupboard.  She suited my two great needs, no close connections and not pretty enough to tempt me to empty her unless it was an emergency. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I had been a few days from it when she came to me.  Serendipity is rare, but that is its magic, is it not? </em>
</p><p>
  <em> My plan had been to take every drop and dispose of her in the lake.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Yet I had not.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Now, listening to the air rasp a bit in her troubled lungs as she laughed at her own gallows humor, I remembered why I had gone to the trouble of engaging a blood contract, my first since … </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Well, who could remember such things? </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“No,” he said, after a moment of still silence where I saw a flicker of emotion in those cold eyes that died a swift and lonely death, “this is for you.  I should hate to have you faint again whilst I fed.”  </p><p>He snapped his fingers and it was like the snap of an old bone.</p><p>An older woman wearing a face mask came in from what must have been the kitchen and deposited a dish under a cloche at the one spot that had a table service, fetched a bottle of wine and a bottle that had was already open from the sideboard, never getting close to either of us.  “I’ll clean up in the morning,” she said.  She had a thick accent I didn’t recognise, and bored eyes.</p><p>“Not too early.  Pay yourself an extra few hundred for the special circumstances, Zofia.”</p><p>With a small nod she went back to the kitchen.  When the door had clicked decidedly shut Laufeyson crossed the room, pulled out the chair for me, and poured a glass of wine, all in practiced, quick motions.</p><p>“So we open the wine for me and a vein for you?  Or do you drink while I eat?  How does this work?”</p><p>He lazily motioned for me to sit, “Take all of the time you want.  I understand Zofia is a good cook.  Then afterward we go upstairs.”</p><p>“Upstairs?”  I made a point trying to not sound surprised.</p><p>His lip curled at the corner, and the opposite brow rose, “I only eat in bed.”</p><p>
  <br/>
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</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. "We all eat, and it would be a sad waste of opportunity to eat badly." - Anna Thomas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Laurel pays her rent.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p><em> Humans fear dying so much.  I do not understand this, since they long to go on and on, to continue existing and never stop.  </em> Dying <em> is but a moment, even when proceeded by prolonged pain, the dying itself is so quick most creatures do not even know when it has happened.  And then they are dead and </em> that i <em> s the forever they do not understand yet seek. </em>-  Hel, the Goddess of Death and the Dead.</p><p><em> Though, admittedly, dead means different things to different people. </em> - Loki Laufeyson</p><p> </p><p>He laughed at me.  “Don’t worry, my penis and your vagina are not going to grow more acquainted, ever.  Though you will enjoy yourself.”  He placed a graceful hand to his chest, “My most solemn vow.  You are entirely safe from my sexual predation, if not my otherwise carnal ones.”</p><p>Under normal circumstances a man telling me he was going to take me up to his bed and then laughing in my face at the idea that he would want to fuck me would be more than enough to get me to pull my sweater back on and leave.  Perhaps after emptying my plate of steaming hot whatever onto his lap.  </p><p>Perhaps not.  Part of how impulsive I once was meant I never really knew where my impulsiveness would take me.</p><p>I don’t get to do impulsive things any longer.  </p><p>Other things I don’t get to do include taking aspirin, enjoying bad weather, using air freshener (which I don’t miss yet still resent), laugh much, sing, fuck, watch sad or funny movies or really do anything that makes me feel much, see my aunt who is never without a cigarette, get sick, drink booze, or be in stressful situations.  </p><p>Oh, and I have to watch out for acid reflux.</p><p>Between my lungs and my heart, fun was a faint memory that I couldn’t spend much time dwelling on in case I start enjoying myself too much.</p><p>With the wine, the plate of meaty stew with peppers flecking it, and Laufeyson for that matter, I was probably going to die tonight even after all of the effort I had made to save myself.   </p><p>I had given myself, my real self, up in hopes of surviving and now I was throwing it all away.  And it wasn’t even impulsive.  I’d had ten days to think about it and had come there anyway.  </p><p>Or maybe I didn’t.  Maybe that lease and my signature and the blood meant all of this was beyond my control.  Out of my control and in his.  </p><p>As you can probably tell, I don’t deal in certainties anymore.  They never really do a person any good, do they?</p><p>“I read one of your books,” I said as I lifted a spoonful of whatever it was to my mouth, blowing softly on it as my eyes watered from its spicy steam.  </p><p>He sat across the polished table from me, his expression mildly interested, “There’s a non-sequitur.”  Though he said nothing else, his face cold I <em> knew </em> he wanted to know more.</p><p>I’ve never met an artist who didn’t want to know what you thought of their work.</p><p>Maybe I was nervous, because rather than waiting for him to ask I said, “<em> The Serpent’s Trail </em> when I was in high school.  I had completely forgotten about it until I looked you up.  Even then I didn’t think about how old you would have to have been to have written it, since it wasn’t new then.”  </p><p>I ate some of the stew.  It was spicy and a little sour, with lots of pickled cabbage and mushrooms, as well as beef, and it had been so long since I’d eaten anything challenging I was immediately starved for more.  I took another spoonful, this time of just the rich, heavy broth, and I think I may have made a noise as the warmth of it spread through me.  There was a lingering, odd sweetness that I couldn’t place at the end, but I liked it too.</p><p>Pretty soon I was sweating a little, which felt so good.  I took another, larger portion, making sure to scoop up one of the slices of red, evil-looking pepper that floated in there, willing that endorphin rush to hit me.  </p><p>“You<em> forgot </em>about it?” </p><p>The ice of tone was enough to drop the temperature in the room.  Please understand, I mean that literally.  Where I was damp with sweat from food I was now cold.  </p><p>What could I say?  I had forgotten about it.  More than a few things and more than a few books had happened to me in the fifteen or so years since I had read <em> The Serpent’s Trail </em> and while it was a notorious cult book, extreme, violent, borderline pornographic - which was entirely why I had read it - I couldn’t be expected to remember it.  </p><p>Or maybe I was lying.  I do that.  I lie.</p><p>“It is generally not considered to be a <em> forgettable </em> work…” he said almost to himself.  </p><p>Ignoring that, I asked, “<em> The Serpent’s Trail </em>wasn’t exactly a new book when I read it, so hasn’t anyone noticed that its author has aged since … when did it come out?  The 80s?”</p><p>He waved dismissively.  “No one pays that much attention to any author that doesn’t live in New York or publish children's fiction, and everyone assumes my jacket photo never gets updated for vanity’s sake.”  Crossing his forearms on the tabletop he leaned forward, eyes narrowing, “You truly do not recal-”</p><p>The ringing sound of the heavy silver spoon landing on the china bread plate stopped him.  </p><p>I lifted the bowl and licked it clean, then carefully set it down.  “Finished.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> She liked to eat.  Not only when she was starved for it, but for pleasure as well.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> So we had at least one thing in common. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>This time I was able to better appreciate the tactile qualities of the bedroom.  The thick, soft Persian carpets, layered over each other on the floor, thick cashmere throws on the chairs by the darkened fireplace, textured wallpaper that was probably original and marked with green paint that I read was made with arsenic, and of course that grand altar of a bed, covered in furs, velvet, and silk and satin pillows.  </p><p>It was the coldest room I had ever been in.</p><p>“Can we have a fire?”</p><p>“You won’t need it.”  His normally sonorous, even voice was a little hoarse.  I turned to look at him in the doorway.  Somewhere between the stairs where he had motioned for me to go ahead of him and the bedroom he had removed his hair from its queue so it now hung over his white-clad shoulders.  </p><p>His eyes were hooded, snake-like, mesmeric, matching the impossibly sinuous way he moved, as if entering the most private space of his home meant he could shed away any shreds of the humanity he wore as a costume.  Staring into my eyes as he crossed to me, he said, “Think of something warm.  Of something hot that pleases you.”</p><p>It was not a request, nor a suggestion.  </p><p>There was a little park next to where I used to live, gated and you needed a key, unless you lived in the building.  My bedroom window overlooked a path bordered by trees and flowers and when it was very hot, then rained, and the sun came out again the ground would mist and the wet earth and greenery was like a perfume.  I would take naps then, so it was like sleeping in a greenhouse, something I had wanted to do since I was a kid.</p><p>My whole body relaxed so fast that my muscles hurt from it and my legs were weak, not enough to make me stumble, but enough that when Laufeyson slouched behind me, wrapping an arm about my shoulders, and resting a large, widespread hand over my stomach, I was glad to have something to lean on.  </p><p>I could feel that he was cold to the touch, but my body was warm enough for both of us.  </p><p>“How’s the neck?” he asked against the skin where he had bitten before, which was completely healed.  No breath tickled my skin.  “The skin has closed nicely, but any residual pain?  If you need there are other places I can feed from.  My apologies for the discomfort last time.  Blood tastes best when there is pleasure, or at the right kind of pain, leading to pleasure.  In my hunger I didn’t offer you the choice.  From my experience a sensualist such as you seem to be would prefer pure pleasure.”</p><p>“Usually…” I managed to say, and the way he stilled I could tell I had surprised him again.  Good.  I wanted him to keep guessing.</p><p>That was the last full thought I was to have for some time.</p><p>That big, splayed hand worked slowly down my body, until it reached my hips and then fisted my skirt up until it was ruched enough to show my panties.  “There is a lovely one here,” he offered, stroking the inside of my thigh.  </p><p>It had been so long since anyone without some kind of medical degree had touched any of my other than to shake my hand I was wet in seconds.  I could feel the sneering curl of his lips against my neck, “It <em> smells </em> like a yes.”  Then he opened his lips and ran the outsides of his teeth over me, wetting my skin, then, turning me so we were face to chest, he knelt. </p><p>Dragging his mouth and nose down the front of my dress, stopping briefly to frown at where my heart raced enough that I would have been terrified if I wasn’t long past any emotions I had names for.  Then he resumed more slowly, taking in how I smelled almost as eagerly as he had taken my blood.  </p><p>When he reached My center he buried his nose in the fabric over my mons and invaded my space like a dog - no, a wolf - brushing its proud bridge over my clit. Turning his head, he met my eyes questioningly.  I squeezed his shoulders to keep from stumbling backward.  They were broad and as unyielding and as human as granite.</p><p>I recalled myself.</p><p>“My neck is fine,” I whispered, closing my eyes.</p><p>Rather than try to persuade or pursue, he let me go and with a bit of a flourish motioned to the bed, “Please take your boots off.  I had to throw out one of my favorite mink blankets after the last time.”</p><p>I didn’t apologize since I wasn’t sorry.  </p><p>While I removed them, Laufeyson unbuttoned his shirt and threw it aside and then unzipped the back of my dress, and before I could complain and faster than I could see let alone stop, shoved it down, lifted me out of it and carried me to the bed.  “Matters are neater this way,” he said, caging my body with his before looking down at me.  </p><p>I gulped air, air that seemed too thin.  My heart was going too fast.  For the first time, I panicked, my body pushing as hopelessly at him as I would have a marble statue that had fallen on me.  </p><p>He met my eyes.  We were close enough now that I saw the pupils were not exactly round.  </p><p>“Think of when you were at peace.”</p><p>Not a suggestion, not an order.  I was back in my old bed again, in winter, very late at night.  The snow outside muffled all sound.</p><p>I took a breath.</p><p>It was wonderful.  </p><p>My body was so relaxed I could not make myself move, not that I wanted to.</p><p>“Next time wear black undergarments,” he told me, and then pushed his thigh between mine and used my hair to pull my head to the side, firmly.</p><p>“You implied you were comfortable with a certain amount of the right pain,” he said as he tightened that grip on my hair and bit deep at the same time as he did something just as uncanny with the muscles in that long leg, and then sucked.</p><p>My already more than ready clit was suddenly being massaged, the hand holding my hair tight enough that it burned and the lovely, long draws of my blood, the suck strangely tender, left me feeling as if I only existed as a body.  A body caught in three places. </p><p>As he ate his body grew steadily hotter.  Hot past a human temperature, which only made my muscles softer and weaker.</p><p>The suck moved the bliss inwards and I could swear I felt my blood, hot and filled with life, pooling in his mouth, running down his throat, spreading through him as it had spread through me.</p><p>Everything felt good, all of my sense of time was lost. </p><p>I moaned when he stopped.</p><p>“You are a luscious thing, aren’t you?” he said, stopping all movement, so he was as still as stone, “If you like you can come on my leg, these pants are ready for the dustbin as it is.”  </p><p>I was too far gone to be offended, but not too far to actually do it, even though he then slowly let my hair go and licked me clean.</p><p>I shuddered and fisted the blankets and refused to move.  It would take so little and my cunt was already starting to pulse.  The way he was licking my neck, my shoulder, even down to the hollow of my throat where he swirled his tongue, I almost came even without moving.</p><p>When I was clean, Laufeyson reached beside the bed and pulled a large, patch bandage from the nightstand, and carefully put it on me.  “That can come off in a few hours.”  Cocking his head, with a curious look, “If you are quite certain you don’t need to relieve yourself, you can sleep until I am ready for bed, then let yourself out.”</p><p>Rolling off of me, he stood and started to leave the room when I heaved myself to sit on the end of the bed.  Even that little pressure almost made the orgasm that I was teetering on the edge of happen.  </p><p>“I can go now.”</p><p>He frowned, “You’ll fall down the stairs.”  </p><p>Standing there, holding his shirt he had picked up from the floor, his skin was slightly flushed, and he was warm enough that he steamed in the cold room. The tilt of his head, the rigidity of his shoulders, should have looked awkward and might have on a human, on him they were just signs of a powerful kind alertness. </p><p>Not a drop of blood was anywhere on him.  </p><p>At that moment I would have loved for him to be anything less than beautiful.  Rather, he was a great deal more.</p><p>The look on his face was concerned.</p><p>Sure.  Everyone wanted to be sure they knew where their next meal was coming from and if I did break my neck he was going to have to find a place that did carryout.</p><p>“Toss me my dress,” I said, tugging my boots back on.  No longer aroused, I was damp, sore, and irritable.  And shivering.  Hard.</p><p>He did, a little harder than necessary.  “I am not used to my hospitality being ignored.”</p><p>“And I’m not used to being dinner.  New things all around,” I said jerking the dress over my head and putting my sweater back on without bothering to zip my dress.  “I’m going out through the kitchen.  It’s closer.”</p><p>“If you do fall and harm yourself from being an idiot I won’t come to your aid.”  </p><p>Despite this, he followed me down the stairs, which I took slowly, my head light and the cold starting to hurt, then through the kitchen, which I barely noticed other than that it still smelled good and was slightly warmer, down the back stairs, and through the garden.</p><p>For whatever reason it made me angry, so when we reached the stairs to my place I rounded on him quickly enough to make my head spin.  I caught myself on the banister. </p><p>He didn’t try to help.</p><p>“Stop.  Ok?  I promise not to fall.”</p><p>Taking a step back, he did not speak.  His hair was back in its tail, his shirt was buttoned, the glasses he didn’t need hiding how strange his eyes were, making him look almost human.  </p><p>Except he didn’t breathe, and his feet were bare in the frosty dirt of the garden, and a fine mist danced around him, and he did not move at all.</p><p>I made it up the stairs.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> She made it up the stairs, her long legs unsteady but strong.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I had offended her, which was her problem, not mine, nor would it be the last time.  Well, at least it meant I could change my bedding before going to my daily rest, so little offense to her hurt me not at all and in fact did me some good.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Yet for various reasons, I was busy the rest of that night working and did not have time to put on clean sheets after all.   </em>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. - Anthony Bourdain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Rent must be paid.</p>
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</p><p>Lovely art by @dianamolloy</p><p> </p><p>I would tell you about what I did over the next ten days, but why?  I did nothing that I found interesting so god knows you would probably die of boredom.  </p><p>More important than what I did was what I didn’t do.  </p><p>I didn’t find a new job, since there were no jobs to be found.</p><p>I didn’t see another human being, other than the grocery delivery person through the kitchen window.  They wore a mask and a hoodie, we nodded at each other like civilized people, and I slid a tip wrapped Saran Wrap under the door to them.  </p><p>Even when I was out for a run I saw no one, since I had taken to running at night.  Very late, in the cold, when it was completely silent.  Quieter than I had ever experienced life, without the ambient, distant noises from planes or cars in the distance, or houses and businesses humming with electricity.  The quiet of a world where everyone was going to bed early because they couldn’t do anything anyway.</p><p>It was darker too, and the moon glowed more, probably because of there being less pollution, even slightly less light pollution.  The sky was like a black pearl.</p><p>God, I really hate running, but for once that sky made it almost worthwhile.</p><p>I didn’t respond to any calls or emails or texts from my still stubborn friends.  </p><p>I didn’t see Laufeyson.  </p><p>One thing I did do was dig out my precious, long out of print hardcover copy of <em> The Serpent’s Trail </em> because though my landlord/client  arrogant enough as it is, talking about it made me want to read it again.  Not that I need to.  I probably have every line of Tobias and Elinor’s mad, destructive road trip memorized, I’ve read it so many times.</p><p>I was surprised when I mentioned how young he looked on the dust jacket after telling him I barely remembered the book that he didn’t think it was odd.  But if you prick a male’s vanity it tends to overwhelm everything else.</p><p>Even a dead male.</p><p>I hadn’t unpacked most of my books since I had moved.  Those twenty boxes were all stacked in the small room that the last tenant had used for a closet.  She must have had quite the wardrobe, which I didn’t.  </p><p>Depression is not an unusual side effect of what is wrong with me, or so one of the doctors I saw said.  Depression is also probably not an unusual side effect of living through a grotesquely mishandled pandemic.  Or losing your job.  Or having to become food so that you, yourself, can eat.  So I don’t feel like reading much those days.</p><p>That said, when I pulled out the box that had <em> The Serpent’s Trail </em>and all of Laufeyson’s other books I found myself opening the others as well.  Looking in that room I thought it might be nice if I could ever afford it to line it with shelves and bring in one comfortable chair to put by the window that overlooked the garden and the house.</p><p>Tired from moving the boxes, I sat there on the floor, my back propped against the wall, and read until I realized it was dawn.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> My newest work was stagnating, as I found that I could not make myself care about the whimsical horrors and surreal changes I was inflicting on my latest heroine.  She bored me.  The still, unmoving world bored me. </em>
</p><p>I<em> bored me. </em></p><p><em> I </em> never <em> bored me. </em></p><p>
  <em> My agent had contacted me about writing a sort of updated Journal of the Plague Year for an online New Weird magazine, that movement having embraced my work even though I long predated it.  Whilst I had not written a serialized piece since Dickens had died, and I thought the concept was laughably trite, I did not loathe the idea of doing it and for a few weeks I stared at the page - I wrote longhand drafts first, to connect myself to the words through action - and continued staring. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Writer’s block was best healed by variety, the exact commodity that could not be had.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Frustration is not good for me.  Or for those around me.  Zofia started coming to clean during the day, not being a fool. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> One night, or morning for it was after three, I saw Laurel leaving her apartment to jog.  The sullen look on her face as she faced the prospect of the exercise put a smile on my own face and turned to the page. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “My tenant looked weak and hollow, and her eyes burned like a fever victim, though she was not sick.  She was, however, very, very hungry…” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Ten days passed.  I wrote. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Ten days passed.  I read.  </p><p> </p><p>The weather was slightly warmer, we were in that part of the year where spring had arrived in theory but in practice it was still the last of winter, and the grass on the front-lawn of the house crunched with frost as I crossed it.  I wanted not to go.  I wanted to make him try to have me evicted, which wasn’t possible during those days.  I wanted to make him pound on my door.  I wanted to make him come to me.</p><p>The lease meant none of that was possible, so if I couldn’t not go, I at least was going to go early.  To disrupt his schedule if nothing else.  </p><p>Laufeyson wasn’t outside this time.  When he came to the door he was wearing those glasses he didn’t need again, his hair was in a loose braid, and he wore a very soft looking black sweater over one of his apparently infinite supply of white shirts and, to my deep shock, jeans.  Albeit jeans that probably cost as much as a payment on the car I no longer drove and showed off the leanness of hips and the length of his incredibly long legs.</p><p>I was angry, and yet at the sight of him, beautiful, elegant, and the way he smelled -</p><p>I haven’t mentioned that yet, have I?  He smelled like copper and ink.  All of the time.  It wasn’t a ‘I smell his aura’ kind of thing.  His breath smelled of fresh blood and his hands smelled of ink.  </p><p>And his body smelled like something you want to rub against.</p><p>-the sight of him, beautiful, elegant, and the way he smelled, like copper, ink, and sex, made me angrier.  </p><p>He rested a hand high on the door, loose-limbed and smirking at me.  “You’re early.  Eager?”  </p><p>I didn’t answer but sidled in the narrow space between him and the doorframe, taking off my hoodie and tossing it over my shoulder at him, knowing he was too fast for me to hit in the face but dreaming of it anyway.  “Don’t worry about dinner.  I ate.  Let’s just do this.”</p><p>Trudging up the beautiful, glowing wood staircase, I waited for him to overtake me, but he never did.  I thought.</p><p>He was waiting when I got to the bedroom, sitting near the cold fireplace, typing on a laptop, those useless glasses pushed up to rest on the top of his head.  Not looking up, he asked, “Was there a problem with the meal last time?  Zofia is very vain about her cooking and I would hate to have her offended.  She is extremely useful.”</p><p>“The food was fine, better than fine.  Luscious.”  I drew out the word as hard as I could, “If you have Tupperware I can take what she made with me, I’m sure I’ll be hungry later.”  Looking around, I asked, “Is there any way to play music in here?”  </p><p>He shook his head, a frown between his brows.  </p><p>“That’s too bad.  It’s a little disgusting to have you so close to me and only hear my own breathing, my own heart.  I was hoping to block it out.  You seem like a Billie Holiday type.  ‘Gloomy Sunday’?  No?”  </p><p>As I spoke I stripped, first toeing off my unlaced running shoes, then pushing the loose sweats I like to run in down and stepping out of them, finally pulling off my t-shirt.  “You said black, right?”</p><p>He looked up, finally.  “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he said, taking in my oldest sports bra that was slightly loose on me and a pair of underwear that was once black but had faded to grey, with frayed elastic.  And black athletic socks.</p><p>His tone was just to the dry side of the Atacama Desert.</p><p>I wish<em> I </em>was that dry.  Sadly....</p><p>He waited.  Expectant.  He lowered those stupid glasses as if he needed them to see, and not just to be a sexy professor type.</p><p>I shrugged and shivered, laying down on the magnificent bed, “No hurry, but I‘m cold so the socks stay on,” I added, wrapping myself in one of the furs, grabbing my phone.  I was playing Arcana and Julian had just gotten himself wrapped up in the Devil’s chains and I had enough coins to play out the rest of the chapter.</p><p>I had barely opened the app when my phone was gone, my wrists were being held high over my head, pressing into the headboard, and Laufeyson’s other hand was firmly, if not painfully, wrapped about my neck.  </p><p>“You are being petulant.  Do not think to take out your hurt feelings on me,<em> festa </em>.”  There was a sternness to his voice that hid actual anger, not merely annoyance.  Then, as if catching himself in a human moment of real emotion, the pressure on my throat eased, but he still held me still.  I hated that I wanted to purr, not from the weight, but from the touch.  </p><p>“Were you offended by my disinterest in your cunt last time?”  His voice was a humoring croon.  His weird gaze dragged up from between my legs to my eyes. </p><p>“Look, Laufeyson, there was nothing in the lease about me having to eat dinner with you, or wear anything in particular, or put up with you making me feel undesirable, or to just be a shit to me.  So just get it over with.”</p><p>He had the gall to look a little offended.  </p><p>I knew it was dangerous to offend him.  To poke him.  He could kill me with no effort, or worse, hurt me badly, in ways that would make me suffer for how ever long he let me live.  That night, that time, I was past caring.  </p><p>Then he shrugged.</p><p>“True.”</p><p>The hand on my neck slid behind it, to make it arch, then his fangs were in my throat before the ‘u’ sounded faded, his chest pressing my chest, my wrists still in his hand.  The pain was still sharp, but so quick, as if my flesh was eager to open for him.  </p><p>When he sucked I knew every inch of me was ready to open for him and I fought it.  Despite the noise he didn’t know he was making as he ate I made myself go stiff and stared hard at the elaborately painted ceiling.  Hard enough to make my eyes ache and tried to think of anything that wasn’t how good his mouth made me feel.  For once I wanted my lungs to heave and my heart to frighten me.  The effort to not let my toes curl made them cramp.  </p><p>I must have made a sound.</p><p>The glorious suck stopped and my breath heaved in relief.</p><p>He lifted his head, our faces very close together.  For the first time, I could see my blood on his lips and teeth.  Stopped in the act of feeding, his pupils were massive and there was something … innocent in his face.  Innocent and surprised.</p><p>For a few seconds he was still, other than the thumb of the hand that held my wrists, which gently whispered over my speeding pulse.  My body unknotted, but I refused to look away, or to soften my own look, which was fixed in a sneer.</p><p>Maintaining that expression in the face of his shock was nearly impossible.</p><p>“Are you going to finish?  There is a movie on TMC I want to watch at midnight and I forgot to set up to record it.”</p><p>Then he snarled and pushed away from me, crossing to sit again with the laptop.  “Get out.  You’ve killed my appetite.”</p><p>It took a few seconds for me to be brave enough to sit up, holding my bleeding neck.  “Band-ai-”</p><p>He cut me off, pointing to the drawer they had been in before, not looking at me.</p><p>I bandaged myself and dressed, as he pecked away.  He had only taken a little, so I was steadier in some ways than last time, but more afraid.  When I was dressed I asked, “So do you have that Tupperware?”</p><p>I wasn’t expecting an answer and I didn’t get one.  </p><p>When I was almost out of the bedroom door I stopped, steeled myself and I said, “‘Next time, be a gentleman, or be a monster, I can’t be bothered to care which.  But choose or be prepared for more of the same.’”  </p><p>He didn’t follow me, but his silence did.</p><p> </p><p><em> She quoted </em> me <em> to </em> me. </p><p>
  <em> “‘’Next time, be a gentleman, or be a monster, I can’t be bothered to care which.  But choose or be prepared for more of the same.’”   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> What Elinor said to Tobias in chapter seven of The Serpent’s Trail, right before their affair started in earnest and ended in so many deaths.  She said it in the unstudied way of someone who had not merely memorized the lines, but knew the words.  Knew what they meant.  Knew their context. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The lying little bitch. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I couldn’t remember the last time I was so hungry. </em>
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  <em> Or my cock had been quite so hard.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> It was marvelous. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I went to the window and watched her cross the garden, climb those damned stairs again, and let herself in.  At the last second, she turned and gave me a one-fingered salute. </em>
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  <em> I had taken for granted I knew who she was.  What she was.  I was wrong.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I do not like being wrong.  I never have.  </em>
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  <em> I would not be wrong again. </em>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Nothing helps gluttony along so well as eating food you don’t have to pay for yourself - Margaret Atwood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Another payment is made</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
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  <em> When the sun set I rose immediately, though normally I linger in bed for some time, even when alone. Probably even more often when alone, since my own company never fails to satisfy which I cannot always say of my bedmates.  But that evening I had ideas that I needed to get down before they faded.  Downstairs I could hear Zofia finishing up for the day. </em>
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  <em> We do not dream, my kind. </em>
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  <em> Not our own dreams. </em>
</p><p><em> But if we are talented, and old - and I am very talented and very old - and in a </em> bit <em> of a mood, we can steal into the dreams of others and take them, even though it can be a bit debilitating.  Not to me, of course. </em></p><p>
  <em> I have always been a music lover.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I hummed to myself as I wrote.   </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Though I couldn’t sing any longer I often dreamt about it.  I missed it so much.  </p><p>When I dreamt that night I opened my mouth and nothing came out.</p><p>The next day around noon I woke up and thought, ‘<em> He might decide to just kill me </em>.’  </p><p>Laying in bed, I wrapped my arms around my pillow and stared at the wall wondering if I perhaps had some kind of death wish.  It was possible.  I had already run away from my friends, set up a shitty kind of half-life in another place rather than facing their concern and care when I was going to have to change how I live.  </p><p>I hadn’t bothered to get a new doctor.</p><p>I have never been especially drama-prone, despite being a musician.  I just came from a family where it was better to hide your wounds.  </p><p>Then again, I was petrified of getting sick. Of catching <em> it </em>.  Though there is a very big difference between going through a drawn-out, painful death while people scramble to save you, and dying at the teeth of an impossibly beautiful monster who was your favorite author.</p><p>I thought about it and decided that I didn’t want to die, as such, but that if it was going to happen why not go out providing a hearty meal to someone who had given me so much on the page since I was a girl and much too young to understand what he had written.  </p><p>When I tried to get up I felt weak.  My legs were heavy and my head foggy.  For a terrifying minute I thought I had caught<em> it </em>somehow, though my lungs didn’t hurt and my breathing was easy enough.  Holding the walls, I got to the bathroom and took my temperature, and a deep sniff of my pine tar shampoo.  </p><p>The first was normal and I could smell the second so I figured it was stress or hunger.  After eating a bowl of yogurt and fruit, and some toast, I took my coffee and went back to my spartan bedroom but couldn’t sleep.</p><p>I kept thinking about my friends, then reached under the bed and picked up my laptop, and spent the rest of the day sending messages and nursing my increasingly terrible headache.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> For ten days I was more inspired in my work than I had been in this benighted millennia … I wrote until my fingers ached, words pouring out of me.  After a time I started narrating into a recorder, something I hadn’t done since the 80s, thinking I could hire someone online to transcribe. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> At dawn I would fall into bed, spent and smiling. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>For ten days I felt like garbage that had been laying in the sun.  But I started a Messenger conversation with my friend Marissa.  </p><p>She forgave me.  </p><p> </p><p>On the tenth day I felt better.  Weirdly, suddenly.  Whatever had been going on with me ended as quickly as it started, though I was left with an odd sort of hollow feeling behind my thoughts.  I know that sounds vague, but I don’t have a better way to explain it.  Having spent a full week doing nothing much it probably wasn’t surprising that my brain was uninspired.</p><p>Getting ready to go pay rent, I didn’t make a special effort in either direction as far as what I wore.  </p><p>At the foot of the stairs, Laufeyson was waiting.  He stood in that too still way, his head tipped back to watch me lock the door and walk down to him.  He was wearing a tweed jacket over a white oxford shirt, and brown corduroys, and those pointless glasses.</p><p>Author drag.</p><p>“Am I late?  It’s today, isn’t it?” I stopped halfway down.</p><p>“I was in the garden, making notes for the new plantings, so I thought I would escort you.”  He lifted his elbow, offering me his arm.  </p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“I don’t explain myself.”</p><p>I shrugged and took the last five steps to choose between being petty or not and finally decided to take his arm.  He smiled down at me, a big, closed mouth grin.  “I hope you haven’t eaten.  Though I did have Zofia fetch some Tupperware if you have.” he said as we strolled towards the kitchen door.  </p><p>“Um, no, well, not much.”  He held the door open for me.</p><p>The kitchen was beautiful, of course.  I hadn’t paid much attention to it when I left last time, since I was too busy hurrying out in case he decided to follow me.  The appliances were vintage, in pine green and brass, and the glass-fronted oak cabinets showed off Wedgewood dinner services and Waterford crystal.  </p><p>The woman who had served before was putting on a raincoat, getting ready to leave.  “The roast is in the oven.  He said you didn’t keep kosher or halal so it’s pork.  The gravy is done.  I made peas.  Everyone likes peas.”</p><p>I supposed that was true.  She was gone before I could say that.</p><p>“Perhaps you would prefer to eat in here.  It is warmer than the rest of the house,” Laufeyson said, opening the oven.  It smelled wonderful.</p><p>With the speed he didn’t bother to hide from me any longer he had the massive roast out, carved, and served with mashed potatoes, some salad made with tomatoes, and those peas everyone liked.  “Wine or beer?”</p><p>“Explanation.  Why are you being so not an asshole to me?” I asked, while still sitting down to eat.  I hadn’t had a proper Sunday dinner in longer than I could remember and I wasn’t about to pass it up.  </p><p>“Wine,” he said, “red wine is better for you.”  He opened a bottle of something and poured me a glass, sitting across from me.  “As for why….”  He leaned back, loose and comfortable on his kitchen chair, which I was certain he had never used before, and gave me another smile.  This one open-mouthed, with just enough fang to make my breath hitch.  </p><p>Running a lazy thumb over his lower lip, he contemplated.  “I have considered both of our behavior at our meetings and have found us both wanting.  So, being that I am your elder and superior it falls to me to guide us into a more harmonious relationship.  After all, you have much to offer, even if it is not at once apparent upon a first or even second meeting.”</p><p>I was so busy being insulted it didn’t occur to me then to think about what he was actually saying, since my having blood would have certainly been apparent on our first meeting.  </p><p>“Superior?”</p><p>God, the roast was delicious.  I wanted to pick up the gravy boat and drink straight from it.  My body was craving the fat I hadn’t given it in so long.  The salt.  The everyday need for food being transformed into desire.  Each bite better than the last.  Perhaps less amazing and unusual than what Zofia had made before, I wanted that comfort.</p><p>“Obviously.”  He didn’t bother to explain himself further, and he stared at my mouth as I ate, then my throat, as if he could see the food making its way down, to enrich my blood, to make his own meal more delicious.</p><p>I ate slowly, and was surprised when he kept talking.  “Do you miss performing?  I know from your paperwork that you were in a band.  Over my life there have been times when I have not been able to write and it has always been detrimental to my mental state.”</p><p>When I served myself more potatoes, heavy with cream and butter and they spoke to my Irish soul he kept up both sides of the conversation.  “I have excellent hearing.  So excellent in fact I have had to train myself not to hear things or the noise becomes an irritant, but I have not ever heard you singing when alone in your flat.  Not even in the shower.”</p><p>“You can hear me taking a shower?”  My body flushed at the idea of that, though I couldn’t say why.</p><p>He leaned forward.  The table was much smaller than the dining room one was, so when he did we were hardly any distance apart.  “I can have a sense of everything you do, if I want.  I can smell the rosemary in your shampoo, hear coffee when you pour it into your cup and your footsteps as you cross the floor to get it, even know about the lubricious dreams you sometimes have and never do anything about.  There is something very loud about you, underneath that quiet life you are pretending is your natural state.”</p><p>I realized I had been chewing the same bit of roast long enough to turn it to liquid.  I cleared my mouth with a small sip of wine, then took another.  I could feel how hoarse my voice was going to be when I spoke.  “I’m done.”</p><p>I didn’t want to think about him thinking about me.  </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> She is not beautiful.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Still. </em>
</p><p><em> She is not </em> not <em> beautiful.   </em></p><p>
  <em> She has a weak place.  We all do.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Well, you all do. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Now I knew her. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>His bedroom was, as usual, cold, but I was warmed up and logy enough from the big meal that it didn’t bother me as much as it did the other times.  Or I was just no longer shocked by the wave of it when I entered.</p><p>When I started to undress Laufeyson shrugged out of his jacket, draping it carefully over one of the chairs by the cold fireplace and unbuttoned his shirt.  I pulled my sweater over my head and sat down to pull my boots off.  He took off his Clarke’s and unzipped his trousers.</p><p>I stopped moving.</p><p>They fell from his lean hips.  </p><p>He had a very splendid penis, even when only slightly hard.    </p><p>“Pardon my comfortable attire.” he laughed, a bit, taking his hair out of its queue, shaking it out. It was black enough that I half expected it to splatter darkness on the wall.  “Undergarments are a modernization I have never grown used to,” he said.  “If it makes you uncomfortable you should recall something that makes you … relaxed.”</p><p>A memory, I don’t even know which one, started to flood my mind at his suggestion, but I forced it away, it tried to come back and I pushed it away again, leaving me dizzy.  “Stop doing that!”</p><p>He took my arm again and led me to the bed even though I still had my pants on, “What a stubborn little thing you are,<em> festa </em>, fighting against what is for the best.  Very well.”</p><p>The memory was gone.</p><p>“Sometimes it's ok to be uncomfortable.”</p><p>“If you say so.  I have never been of that philosophy.”  He gently pushed me back against the piles of pillows.  They were icy, but before I could shiver he pulled me to him, rubbing the back of my neck with one hand, and stroking my arms with the other.  His skin was less cold than it had been in the past.  I mentioned that.</p><p>“When I feed regularly my body is more superficially human.  Are you ready?”</p><p>I was.  Not angry or turned on, just ready, and strangely comfortable despite myself.  It had been so long since I’d experienced even the illusion of affection that I found myself limp, not weak, but….</p><p>Something else.  </p><p>The back of his hand brushed my breast, my cold, hard nipple, and when I made a sound he cupped it, his long fingers taking it in entirely, as he brushed his lips over the place he was going to bite, not kissing but caressing.  </p><p>Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I missed someone simply caring about me or for me. </p><p>When he bit me a tear leaked out of the corner of my eye.  </p><p>He stopped sucking long enough to lick it up.  “Even your tears are delicious.”</p><p>I knew that he was playing with me.  That this was his way to get me compliant.  To make me feel for him.  I had read his books.  I knew how this story went.  </p><p>He moved closer to me, sliding a hand into my pants, sucking slowly, so his suckle made my blood hum.  I was wet and swollen and ready.  He stroked my clit in time to his mouth.  </p><p>My legs moved restlessly, he threw one of his over mine, to still them.  </p><p>His cock was hot and hard against my hip, and he ground it against me.</p><p>My breath had jagged edges.  </p><p>“Come for me,” he kissed the bite marks, fingering me, “It makes your blood sweeter.”  </p><p>“I- I- I- can’t, I can’t …” my words were broken, my lungs were broken, my hips lifted and rubbed myself on his hand.  I wanted to, but I was afraid, and it had been so long.</p><p>“Please…” he drawled against my neck, my jaw, my lips.  </p><p>I tasted myself on him.  I dug my fingers into that black, black hair, long and silken and my body shuddered as I came apart under his hand, his leg, his teeth.</p><p>“Ahhhh…” he moaned in his own pleasure as he lapped the bloody holes in my throat.  </p><p>Boneless and soothed by the steady motion of his tongue, I fell asleep. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly - Barbara Kingsolver</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>When I woke up, I was alone in the massive bed, but Laufeyson was at a table by the window tapping away on his laptop, frowning with pleasure at whatever he was producing.  For a few moments, I didn’t move.  It was warm under the blanket, unlike the rest of the room, and I liked the steady sound of the keys under his fingers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There is water with lemon,” he pointed to a glass beside the bed without looking up.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Swinging around to sit up I waited to be lightheaded.  When nothing happened I took a few sips, “Does the lemon make me tastier?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He frowned harder and kept working, “No.  My understanding is it is refreshing.  I wouldn’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the first time since our arrangement started, I felt … not good, that would be going too far, but I felt decent after the fact.  My head was clear, I wasn’t weak, and if I was tired it was a normal sort of tired.  “You’ve never had lemon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson gave a sigh, as if showing great fortitude, and turned towards me.  He stood slowly, straightening his shoulders, stretching his legs as he rose, pushing the chair backward with a quiet scrape on the polished floor.  As he sauntered towards the bed, he used the back of his hand to push a loose lock of hair back, making a big show of doing so, either to make it clear how annoying he found me at the moment, or … or for other reasons I didn’t think made sense.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peacocking for me made no sense.  There was no way for him to have any more of me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Have I mentioned how tremendous he looks?  There is something harrowing about having him concentrate on you that is more than simply being about how beautiful and handsome he is, since he is both things, but there is more to it than that.  When he looks at me now, since I know what he is, there is a weight behind it, a pressure pushing at me.  Pressing me down.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like the weight of the earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But at times it was more like it might feel if he were on top of me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lemons,” he said with the tone of a professor leading a student by the hand, “did not arrive Europe until long after I had …” he gave a half-smile, “lost my appetite for fruit.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How old are you?” I asked as I started getting dressed, not expecting him to answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Around 1200 years, give or take.”  He leaned on the wall, arms crossed, smiling smugly as I sat back down.  Then he moved slowly over me, leaning down so I fell onto my back.  His head angling side to side, he met my eyes.  “I am very, very old.  There are only a handful of my kind that are older.  So remember, each time you lose one of our little confrontations, to not feel too bad about it.  The fact that you are even able to play my game is a kind of victory.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When I found out the damage to my heart was permanent, that the infection that started with a simple, broken tooth that I couldn’t afford to fix had worked its way through my body leaving me a wreck, I actually laughed about it.  My doctor and her nurse were nice about the whole thing, about how hysterical I became, and that hysteria then triggering an asthma attack.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’ve always had a dark sense of humor.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was right when I heard that news after having been sick for so long, which was after the adult-onset asthma, which was before I had to quit my band and lost my boyfriend in the process, which was after so many small things happening, I couldn’t take any more.  I had to laugh, or I was going to do something terrible to myself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As it was, l ran away from that life.  If I was going to die young, I didn’t want to die around people who either expected me to be happy or who were going to try and make me happy.  Which is selfish, probably.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And now,</span>
  </em>
  <span> I thought, as I lay on my bed stroking the holes in my throat as dawn crept up and over my windowsill, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I have this instead</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Touching myself where he had bitten made me wet, but I was too afraid to do anything for myself.  There was something about when Laufeyson was using me that made it feel safe for me to come, to laugh, to pick fights with him, get angry, get any strong emotions.  I had subconsciously convinced myself that he wouldn’t let me die.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I dreamt about it instead, coming that is, and I woke up late in the day, happy that I was able to dream again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though I have taken when there was no other choice I prefer seduction.  Perhaps because I am a lazy beast at heart, and whilst far from a coward see no reason to risk myself when there are more pleasurable ways to obtain what I need.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Seduction is a way to have what you want through knowing what the other person craves.  There are times it is a one to one exchange, though that is not the kind that I prefer.  I must always receive more than I give or I feel cheated.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have been told that there are risks with seduction as well.  Of knowing too much about that other and finding yourself seduced in turn.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have never experienced this myself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I wasn’t expecting a delivery so the knock on my door startled me.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was late enough in the afternoon about a week after my last visit to the house.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Despite the months of not, I found myself listening to vocal music again.  Oftentimes late into the night.  I hadn’t stopped listening to music entirely, of course, just anything with lyrics.  But now, as I read, I found myself listening to old playlists.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And singing along, catching myself in the middle of the line, freezing, worried I was going to cough.  With my hands shaking I would turn off the music and a few times, the fear adrenaline would get me out of the apartment for a late jog on the empty streets.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That day when I finally woke up that there were only a couple hours of light.  I had considered taking my laptop down into the garden since it was a little warmer than it had been and sending out more resumes there.  Answering a few more emails.  I was sending messages cautiously back and forth with my friend Risa, who was still unhappy that I wouldn’t tell her where I was but at least finally understood why I had left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the sun was so ... aggressive that day. There weren’t enough leaves back on the trees to sit under, so I lay on the loveseat and found myself drowsing on and off, so much that I gave up on being productive.  I felt fine.  It was a good kind of tiredness, like I wanted to sleep, not the sick kind of exhaustion.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So the knock woke me from that half-state of sleep.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Through the window on the door, I saw the retreating back of a delivery person in a heavy jacket and hoodie going down the stairs.  They had left a box with two bags in it.  One was food, the other was a bunch of different teas.  All from the fancy, too expensive store Laufeyson had sent groceries from before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The food was more of the same - dark chocolate and chilis, liverwurst and garlic, raisins, and kale, and a bottle of Bordeaux that was probably too nice for me to appreciate.  This time, rather than be put off by most of it, I found myself wanting to eat everything.  To melt the chocolate and chilis together and drink it, to cook the kale and the garlic, to eat handfuls of the raisins.  The liverwurst even seemed appealing, if not actually tasty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I pulled out the packets of herbal teas and looked at them.  Cups of hot, weed water had never appealed to me so I knew nothing about chamomile, or what a blend of peppermint, cornflower, ginger, and passion flowers and a bunch of other things that I had never heard of might taste like, or if mugwort was something to drink or something to sprinkle over a goat before you slit its throat under a full moon.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were flowers as well.  French tulips, long, pale, elegant.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Confusing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I didn’t have a vase - I actually didn’t have a lot of stuff beyond the basics since when I moved I sold or donated everything I couldn’t pack in my car or ship cheaply - so I emptied a carton of milk that had gone partially solid, cleaned it out and cut off the top to use.  It worked perfectly with the aesthetic of the plastic-topped, 80s kitchen table that came with the apartment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Around nine I realized I should probably eat something and started cutting up the kale.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The second knock on the door surprised me more than the first one, making the knife I was using skid and almost slice into my thumb.  “Hang on,” I called out after making a little, choked shout, startled by the near-miss.  It took a few seconds to stop shaking and rinse my hands, drying them on a kitchen towel so faded you could no longer see the print of dancing chickens.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had belonged to my aunt and was far older than I was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead of waiting Laufeyson unlocked the door and let himself in.  He was wearing slightly loose jeans and a black oxford shirt, like an almost normal person.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His eyes were narrow behind his glasses, gazing in an accusatory way around the kitchen.  “Are you well?”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I threw the towel at his head, “You just let yourself in here-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-like I own the place?” he easily caught the towel and walked past me to hang it over the edge of the sink.  “I do own the place.  I can and do enter anywhere I wish.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though I was furious I realized this was a vampire thing, not a legal one and not an argument I could win.  Actually, I very much doubted that there were any arguments I could win with him.  “What do you want?” I said, turning to the stove to start cooking the kale and some bacon and garlic together.  It was the only way to make it not taste like dirt.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peering over my shoulder at the stovetop, I could feel him frowning.  “Why did you scream before?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You startled me and I almost cut myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That means your knives are not sharp enough,” he said, reaching around me to pick up a wooden spoon and poke at the mess of greens.  “Do you actually like this food?  It has the appearance of mulch.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It means you startled me, and no I don’t especially-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I turned my head to look up at him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Have I mentioned his looks?  His beautiful face?  I’m not the writer, so I haven’t done him justice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His face was very close to mine and his hair that smelled of rosemary and copper brushed almost my neck.  His nosiness about what I was doing meant his arms were almost around me.  If he breathed, his breath would almost be teasing my ear.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Almost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I would tell you what I was thinking, if I had been thinking.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I kissed him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I am very rarely startled.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps it is because I am so very old and there is little new under the sun.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps it is because I am intensely paranoid and was so even when alive, though it did me no good in the end.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps it is because I generally do not care what happens to me from one moment to the next.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe it’s just that I have no blood pressure to rise?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I could have stepped away from her mouth moving towards mine, for all human movements are slow to my eyes, like they are moving through oil, or perhaps honey.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But watching the languid progression of her arousal - the dilation of her iris pushing the brown aside, the slight pant to her breath, humid and caressing my skin, the delicate parting of her now minutely swollen lips that had gone a shade pinker, a shade that took eyes as good as mine to see and appreciate, the lift of her body as she stood up on her toes, as she licked those pink lips and pressed their wet to me - I did not step away, or turn my head.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I switched off the burner of the stove instead and wrapped an arm about her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her lips startled me.  I knew she wanted me, because of course she did.  Yet at the same time I knew that she feared too much pleasure.  Looking about at the utilitarian conditions she chose to live in would have told anyone that much, even had she not proved pleasure-shy even when I drank from her, resisting until she had no resistance left.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then the hedonist I knew lurked beneath her dull surface would briefly show herself again before retreating again.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her lips were splendid.  When they parted, and her tongue played coyly at mine I suckled it gently, for I am what I am after all, and the smell of her cunt blossomed in the air.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though I am a controlled and restrained monster, as civilized as can be managed by a beast, one does not become what I am if one does not have unsatisfiable appetites.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I have a shitty bed.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it was cheap and I had been able to get it quickly when I ordered it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I used to have an amazing bed.  Not as amazing as Laufeyson’s, but I had spent more money than I could afford on it, the mattress was firm but not made of concrete, the sheets were soft and thick, as were the layers of blankets, and I had more pillows than a sensible person would need.  Not for decorative purposes.  I wanted too many pillows so I could arrange and rearrange them every night, never knowing how I would want to recline on them.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When my fiancé left me I started sleeping on the couch.  The first days when the asthma was worse and less controllable it was easier to sleep sitting up anyway.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This won’t do,” he growled, looking at it as if he had never seen anything so offensive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We had worked our way over the short distance between the kitchen and the bedroom slowly.  His arm around my waist, lifting me a little so as our mouths played he carried me into the living room.  My back to the wall, he took my wrists in his hands and held them out wide so I was entirely open, my toes scrambling to find purchase as his chest pinned me, and he sucked my tongue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The surprising warmth and wetness of his mouth pulling me in was like falling, like being stroked everywhere by velvet.  I wanted to touch him, but was held like I was all I could do was shake against him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another turn and we were in the hallway, now his back to the crappy wood paneling, one big hand holding the back of my head so he could devour my mouth, while the other hand pushed my sweatpants down.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was naked by the time we were in my bedroom, and he was still fully dressed, other than his shoes which he had toed off at some point.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, looking at the small shitty bed, I half expected him to take his refined self back home.  Instead, faster than I could see he had gone back into the living room and taken all of the cushions and pillows off of the couch, tossed the pillows from the bed down as well, and layered all of the sheets and blankets I had, making a big, messy, very inviting nest on the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Should I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Again, I cannot tell you what I intended.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knelt in the midst of the nest, reached for my hips, and lifted me to him and lay me down so his face was nuzzling my achy, tight breasts, then my ribs, moving lower.  Teeth, not fangs, teased the soft skin of my stomach, then lips, then tongue, as his hands moved restlessly up from my ankles. Fine callouses that I had noticed before made my skin more sensitive and I shuddered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt unbearable in the most wonderful way possible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You smell like the heaven I am denied,” he smirked up at me, his chin resting lightly on my belly as he dragged a finger slowly between my legs, “Shall I show you paradise?”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It should have been hokey.  It wasn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He painted his lips with the wet he’d taken from me and then closed his eyes and ran his tongue around them.  When his eyes opened again their green was no longer a colour any human’s eyes had been.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>For what was probably the dozenth time I realized I might die if I let him do what he wanted to me, and for the dozenth time decided I didn’t care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My legs fell open for him.  Because he was a teasing kind of monster he toyed with me there, one finger delicately rubbing my clit as he watched, “You are so wet!” he marveled.  “Haven’t you been seeing to yourself properly, Laurel?  Shameful.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tip of his tongue took the place of his finger and he t’sked against my clit, each flick a jolt of pleasure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My hips tried to lift, to circle to get more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He put an arm across them and held me still so he could play.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He played and played.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was a panting mess in no time, the pleasure of each stroke and suck making me forget to be afraid.  Were my breaths too shallow?  Was my heart racing too fast?  Did I care at all?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Soon, though not as soon as I would have liked his face was buried in me, licking deep and firm and relentlessly as only a creature who did not need to breathe, and who was resoundingly oral would or could.  I had never been so thoroughly eaten.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He took my hips in his big hands, fucking me back and forth against his mouth, rutting me with his tongue so hard that when he stopped on the edge of my orgasm I howled in frustration.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson liked that.  I could feel the nasty grin on his pretty face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The second time I helplessly tried to wrap my legs around his head to hold him in place he bruised me to keep me still.  The marks from his fingertips lasted for weeks and when I touched them the little bit of pain was Pavlovian and I would get wet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he had me undone, overstimulated, all but immobile he crawled up my body, opening his belt, slowly unbuttoning his fly, teasing my mouth with his mouth, then with his long, thick cock, pulling it away when I tried to kiss it, to lick in turn, to take it in.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shall I fuck your mouth rather than your cunt?”  He knelt upright over my face, holding himself hard enough that his knuckles were white with strain, looking down and sounding unmoved despite being skin-splittingly hard.  That he was fully dressed made the way he looked even more obscene and if I could have wanted him more I would have.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wanted to beg him to pick.  I wanted to beg him to fuck every bit of me and leave me annihilated, since the only time I wasn’t afraid of being sick was when we were touching and maybe he could fuck that fear right out of me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We stared at each other for I don’t know how long.  After a few moments Laufeyson started to stroke himself, slowly, in a distracted way as if he wasn’t aware he was doing it.  “Tick tock, Laurel … decide before I finish.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All over my face?” I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shrugged a little, “If you are into that sort of thing.”  But I could see he held himself even tighter, punishingly tight, at the thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wrapped my hand over his, feeling each sinew, my fingers not close to meeting and guided him down to rub between my legs, my breath hitching as my cunt spasmed for want of a good, hard fuck.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He slid slowly, each inch spreading me wider than I had been spread in longer than I could remember, maybe wider than I had ever been.  When he was as far as he could go, his sweater scratching the backs of my legs where they hung over his shoulders, he gave me a half-smile, though his voice was no longer so composed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You feel as good as you taste, </span>
  <em>
    <span>skatten</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he said, his voice deeper, more guttural, as if it cost him to speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I know he had finesse in him, clearly, but not then and I didn’t want it.  He fucked me.  His lean hips pistoned hard enough to make the floor creak beneath us and I found bruises on my back as well as my hips when I tried to sleep later.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>My toes curled hard enough to cramp and I squeezed him inside as well as grabbing his long hair and pulling.  I scratched and bit and took it all out on him and he took it, laughing at every yank and thrust as I lifted myself up to get him deeper and harder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My turn,” he rasped out, biting me back, his fangs piercing the place where my shoulder met my neck and sucking hard, at the same time snaking a hand between us to pinch my clit.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I felt it everywhere.  The orgasm came as much from the bitten skin as it did from between my legs, and when he sucked it drew out the pleasure making it go on and on.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That he came at the same time I was too far gone to realize until he rolled off of me to lay perfectly still at my side.  No heaving breath, no sweating through the clothing he was still wearing, his hair no more mussed than if he had gone for a walk in the park.  Only how wet his cock was showed that he had done anything at all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was, needless to say, a panting, sweating mess.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a few moments he fished into his pocket and pulled out a pristine handkerchief which he wiped himself off with before tucking himself away and standing in a series of quick, neat actions.  “I had come over to tell you that I am going out of town for about ten days,” he said conversationally as he went into my bathroom and came back with a damp washcloth that he pressed to my neck, squatting beside me to hold it in place until I managed to lift a limp hand to take it from him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because of that,” he went on, standing again, “I was going to ask if you preferred to pay your rent before I left or afterward, but I suppose that’s been answered.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where are you going?” I asked, able to sit up by then, pulling a sheet around myself, not that there was any part of me that he couldn’t pick out of a line up at that point.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That is none of your business,” he said, leaving my bedroom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I snorted and stood up, my legs tired but steady and followed him, catching him as he was stepping out the door.  My kitchen smelled strongly of the garlic that had been sitting in the pan all of that time but he didn’t seem to notice or care so I guess there was one myth exposed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Laufeyson-” I called out, wanting to think of a last word to have.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stopped and looked over his shoulder at me, a small frown between his eyes, “Loki.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Call me Loki.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I really don’t want to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You will,” he assured me and was gone.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. The hunger for believing in good things, usually turns up as starvation - Mladen Đorđević</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have a number of small rituals.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Some of them are, I concede, more habits.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Which I prefer to refer to by the more grandiose term ‘ritual’.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>How I go about my bathing, the way in which I prepare to rest for the day, the precise fashion in which I calm myself before working are all actions that might be housed within the word ‘habit’ were they performed by a creature younger and less set in their ways than myself.  I admit, much as I am loath to do so, that perhaps I have become a touch … calcified over the last few decades.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When you are 1200 years old you may laugh at me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What for a human might be an easy consistency for one as I becomes … protective.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What, you might well ask, does a beast such as myself need protection from?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ask away, yet know that I owe no breathing man answers.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>All of that said, there are a few rituals I engage in that are truly, correctly named.  One of the most important being that when I am at the point of closing out the first draft of a new work I finish it away from my home.  If it is because I see these endings as a form of death and do not wish to live in a place where something I love has died, or that I have come to require the spark of change to finish I cannot say.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Rather, I do not care.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>All I knew was that what had started as a serial work taken on at the recommendation of my publisher to while away the scraped and dull days of the latest plague had turned into a longer, more compelling, and rather chaotic work and I needed the discipline of a new environment to bring it to heel.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>We didn’t see each other regularly but almost immediately I was aware that Laufeyson was gone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t left the night that he came to see me.  I don’t know if it was because what we did ended up messing up his travel plans since he was only able to move around in the dark, but the next night I heard sounds coming from the garage beneath me for the first time in months.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I looked out the window just in time to see his impractical yet beautiful sports car pull out and idle in the drive for a moment or two before leaving.  Even though I couldn’t see into the car I knew he was looking at me.  The not unpleasant pressure of his gaze was apparent from fourteen feet up and two panes of glass.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>While he was gone the world opened up a crack.  Some people went back to work in stores, and even though it was still chilly out much of the time apparently some restaurants and bars were putting tables outside and serving a few people under strict guidelines.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>People fought the battle of the masks, and some of them died in those battles, because fear made those who were already inclined to violence or simple, bone-deep selfishness crueler and more terrible.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The little bit I went out during the day dwindled to nothing.  It felt safer to stay in and only go out for one of my slow runs late at night when the world shut down again.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ten days passed.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>During the rest of the afternoons and nights, I read and continued my tentative correspondence with some of the people in my old life.  Mostly Marissa who I could trust not to spread it around where I was, and a cousin overseas who was too far away to interfere with me even if she wanted to.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No jobs were found.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One night I went out to walk, since I was feeling too tired for running, even the half-crawling version of it I did.  I had done little more than circle the block when I felt the pain.  Not bad, more than an ache but less than being stabbed in the heart.  I am not sure if it was the fear or a symptom that had me sweating through my t-shirt and sweatpants before I made it back to the house.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When I looked at the staircase leading up to my apartment I wanted to cry.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, I sat on the bottom step and laughed.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It hurt so bad.  My lungs.  My heart.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing inside of your body is ever supposed to feel sharp.  I mean, your teeth I suppose, the thought of which at that moment made me laugh harder, which hurt more.  And your shoulder blades, since they are blades.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>More laughing.  Now I was holding my chest, both sides.   From the wrong angle, it probably would have looked like I was feeling myself up.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But those are sharp things you don’t feel yourself, apart from the odd time biting the inside of your cheek or your tongue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sharpness probably more than any other kind of pain is a sign that something is very fucking wrong.  A bone is broken.  You’ve been stabbed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your heart is fed up with you looking after your lungs at its expense.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The garden was starting to fill in a bit.  The moon was very bright and less hazy those days. </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>The delicate fuzz that would be green under the light of the sun was turning lush almost as I watched, and tiny shoots were climbing up as the earth turned wetter and warmer.  I had yet to see it in the fullness of summer, having moved in too late for that the year before.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson took great pride in it, even though I never saw him spend much time in it or even looking at it out of the window.  I assumed his eyes were good enough to make out details in the dark that I would miss even on the brightest afternoon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly all I could think was I wanted to see it almost as bad as my body hurt.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I made it up the stairs, only stopping once.  I had no appetite but I made myself drink one of those cups of hot weed water and went to bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I dreamt of trees and the sound of animals screaming.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One of my other houses sits upon the edge of tens of thousands of acres of wilderness.  Within it, there are lakes, so many that even the people who have seen them have not been able to presumptuously name all of them.  Some places the trees are thick enough to not be traversed and some fortunate animals within them will live their entire lives without having to see a human face. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You might think it reminded me of my homeland but you would be wrong.  A tree is not just another tree, the dirt and loam beneath my feet smelled entirely different and would have even had it not been tainted by the filthy smells of oil and burning coal for generations.  The scents of those animals were wildly different as well.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The one I chased that night was not one of those fortunate few and so was canny enough to fear me even before he caught my scent on the soughing of a pine which drifted it towards him.  Then he was in a panic, flying through a narrow gap between elm and ash.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Both were sacred to my people - those people that I belonged to death prior.  My current people held nothing sacred save satisfying our appetites and defying the void.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As I shed my clothing to keep from snagging I gently trailed my fingers over the bark of the ash.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He was a pretty beast.  A young, white-tail buck who rushed on swift and delicate hooves through undergrowth that was filling out after the autumn fires and the winter die-off.  I could smell the sweat from his sides and feel the heat that he gave off in his terrified flight well if not better than he could smell my unnaturalness.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My living people bedecked themselves with blood, and my dead people have no other nourishment and your judgment bores me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My toes dug into leaves that had sat under snow for months and not all but disintegrated under the pounding of my feet, and I laughed - a quiet, ratcheting sound - as newly grown creepers thought to entangle me, and branches snagged my hair that I had unbound and let sail behind me like a flag of war.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I ran quickly enough to part the mist of his hysterical, huffing breaths.  Only the difficulty of the terrain kept him ahead of me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Its blood would be filled with fear.  More metallic and cleaner tasting than human blood and with that savour of terror untainted by rational thought.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Unlike Laurel’s blood.  She was not afraid and it took a considerable erotic effort to silence her mind.  Then, in the spasms of orgasm, she was sweeter than honey and the temptation to drain her was the greatest I had felt in decades.  Centuries even.  To fill myself past completion.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I had actually fucked her…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not that I didn’t fuck the livestock I brought home to feed on normally.  Though I do not normally eat them out like I was expecting to find my non-existent salvation through their cunt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To quote an old antagonist of mine, she was delicious.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel was not like them.  For one thing, the little liar had clearly read all of my books.  I saw them in her or rather MY apartment.  Even those ones that were not published under my name.  Even ones from ages ago that I had practically forgotten writing.  All lined up on a shelf by the window.  There were even bookmarks peeping out of the tops of a few of them.  Seeing them as I left that last night I was caught off guard and could think of nothing to say other than to tell her that I expected her to call me Loki.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No one had called me Loki in a very long time.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I sometimes thought of her after the fact of feeding, though that was certainly because she lived in my backyard and I was forced to see her even between meals.  And I rarely ate at the same place more than once, which made her different as well.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She was like -</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I imagine that there are some bits of information you think you have about my kind that are entirely wrong or possibly correct, and you might like me to set you straight on them.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>First, please understand that I have never set anyone straight in my entire existence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And please understand second, that I owe you nothing.  You, or anyone else.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That said, I will let you know this, that no, I cannot subsist on the blood of beasts.  They can be used to dampen my hunger, and the hunt can satiate certain darker needs that I often find inconvenient in an ever more crowded world.  But if I go too long without human blood eventually I will suffer and weaken.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not perish, yet wither.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I ran the lovely buck to ground he was too tired to fight.  It would not matter.  The great elks of my home had fallen beneath my fangs and spite and he was nothing to them.  To worry through his fine, soaking fur, killing quickly and letting his life spurt into my ready, wet mouth, eased me, even with a pang of certain guilt at destroying something so innocent for no real purpose other than to have a little relief from the modern world.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I sagged to the earth, holding him as he died.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I don’t know that he welcomed my embrace, though it made </span>
  </em>
  <span>me</span>
  <em>
    <span> feel better.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Well enough that I chose to extend my trip a few days longer.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I stopped running.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I considered trying to find a doctor finally, but I had no insurance and with the virus I wasn’t sure if any clinics were still open, but I was sure I wouldn’t go to any of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I ate healthy food and re-read a book Laufeyson wrote in the 1950s that everyone thought had been written by his father. </span>
  <em>
    <span> The Alley Behind Heaven</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  Noir, published by a poverty row publisher that specialized in porn and dark mysteries, and was a little of both.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After peeing blood twice I started to feel better.  It was one of the rarer symptoms of endocarditis and one I hadn’t had before.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was fifteen days and he wasn’t back yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I decided to go down to the garden during the day.  To try and see the flowers coming up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thankfully when I passed out it was on the grass and Zofia found me before it started to rain.  She looked at me with a decidedly Slavic sort of annoyance - one that made it clear that like most people I was too stupid to know when I had it good - but was nice enough to help me get back upstairs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At the start of my second week I was considering staying yet longer.  The people in the small towns around the woods were less … constrained by fears of the current infection.  There were few that I had seen in my brief forays to obtain more paper and to replace the towels I had to burn after I returned from my hunt who looked perfectly toothsome.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As I was a sterile environment and a fastidious eater most of the time they had far less to fear from me than each other.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And yet why would I?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The first draft was off to my agent and my editor, and my own notes were progressing.  I had never stayed at the rather small house I kept for those purposes for so long.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps it was the sameness of the last months stuck in my house with only myself for company and Laurel for food and entertainment?  A change of scene and diet would do me good.  Yet as I sat in the local, dark, congested Northwoods pub, all bad plywood and smudged linoleum, trying to ignore the music whilst sipping slightly at a bottle of rancid and too cold lager, trying to decide between a burly, golden haired man who had the look of a former college ballplayer who had not yet gone to seed or admitted to being gay and his twin sister who was eating pizza in a suggestive manner - which was disgusting and hilarious in equal measure - I could not bring myself to bring either or both back to my bed.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I've convinced people to do worse, believe me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They were beautiful and stupid, exactly my favorite food.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They bored me even from a distance.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was horrified to discover that I missed my home, even more so that I was considering it my home and not just another house that I owned, no more or less important than any other.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I drank the man in the parking lot, one hand down his pants, the other gripping his hair hard enough to pull it out.  He went home with my voice in his ears and his underwear a sodden mess, hopefully ready to find a new life for himself now that we had sorted out his needs.  His skin was smooth and lovely, giving way perfectly beneath my fangs.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The rapt, delirious, ecstasy of his face was dappled red by the fake neon of a beer sign.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I forgot what he tasted like before I got to my car.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That dawn I fell into torpor, rather disgusted with myself, but fuller than I had been in some time.  I had restrained myself with Laurel those last weeks, sipping where I might have gorged.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I woke from a rather peculiar dream where I smelled fresh-cut grass and mud and my skin burned under a sun that I could barely remember the feel of, I had a text from Zofia.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Your tenant is sick.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I left behind everything but my laptop and my notes, pulling on the clothes I had worn the night before, still smelling of a stranger’s blood and drove.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>God fucking help me.  I didn’t even stop to think about it.  I just went.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>With still empty roads, the speed at which I am able to drive, and the time change I was home by midnight.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. The scrimmage of appetite everywhere - Delmore Schwartz</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Loki returns from his trip, Laurel does some reading</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There was a flax field that I passed on the road back home.  I had not noticed it on the way north, which meant it had grown quickly in those few weeks I had been gone.  The tiny, blue flowers were already open and ready to seduce bees and offer their faint perfume to the sky.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Faint, benign, yet for me, there was a quality to them that was sick-making, if I were capable of sickness.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I woke up where I had fallen asleep on the couch.  The bowl of instant ramen I had made myself was still full, resting on the floor where I had set it when I lay down, the noodles swollen, cold, and congealed.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was not exactly the nicest thing to see when you first wake up and your stomach is burning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Moaning for my own amusement, I rolled over onto my back, covering my eyes.  The enormous, turquoise table lamp that came with the apartment, and had probably been there since the 70s because it was too big and ugly for anyone to want to bother with moving, was on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I remembered turning it off.  But who knew if I was remembering earlier that night or another night entirely?  It had been months since time or days meant anything to anyone, and longer for me.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What have you done to yourself?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Normally I probably would have jumped, shouted, something, at the dark, irritated voice but I was too tired, too sapped of energy or anything to call on for energy.  Or maybe my blood pressure was too low.  Maybe I had turned into a psychopath in the last few weeks?  Not likely, but neither was the vampire, yet there he was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had pulled in one of the vinyl-covered, kitchen chairs and was sitting on it, legs spread and leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs, hands dangling loose, so he could glare at me while I slept.  Rather than being carefully pulled back into a queue, or braided, or at least combed to glass-like perfection, his inky hair was slightly disheveled, his sweater was wrinkled, and the collar of the oxford shirt beneath it bent under the neckline.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the first moment since I had seen him, waiting to show me the apartment and my realizing who he was, impossible as it may have been that the writer I loved was going to be my landlord, I could see some sign of the human he had once been.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of which made him more appealing than normal.  He looked like a man, a beautiful man certainly, but one that was human and fallible, and that it might be nice to be held by, on his lap.  A human man who might be capable of comfort.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ha.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cutting me off, he snarled a little, something like a real emotion marring his face, “How can I feed off of you in this state?”  He made a gesture of disgust and stood, stalking towards the kitchen, then turn back so quickly several pages from an old newspaper on the floor rose and the net curtains on the window fluttered, “Why would I </span>
  <em>
    <span>wish</span>
  </em>
  <span> to?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had been gone too long, and already knew I was too sick and probably unsightly for his snobbiness to pay my rent.  But I had saved a bit lately.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have enough … have money, now.  For a few months or so.  That’s probably all I’ll need.  I Zelle’d it to you yesterday.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was so silent, so still, like an object more than a man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Making a noise, I rolled away from him, burying my face in the space between the cushions and the back of the couch.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I heard the door slam behind him and I fell asleep again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The pure, irksome inconvenience of it!  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I could not expect the people of the city to be as incautious of infection as they were in the smaller towns up north that had not been afflicted by COVID yet.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yes, of course, I could still seduce or use other means at my disposal to keep fed.  I had done so before, in the plague emptied streets of Florence, where only the most desperate, incautious, or somehow impaired dared the dark, and again in London, the year before the Great Fire, when the bodies were stacked like cordwood along the old city wall and the stink of them was enough to make even me gag.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To say nothing of Yellow Jack in New Orleans, more years than I care to recall, diphtheria in the Northeast, and smallpox and influenza everywhere.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I found a way.  I went hungry when I needed to.  I did unsavory things when the starvation threatened my sanity.  I survived.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shortly before dawn from the corner of my eye where I worked at my desk, fruitlessly, I saw her light go out.  I wondered if she had returned to her bed, or if she was still on that hideous sofa.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She had looked nearly as bad as the furnishings.  Filthy haired and bodied, her mouth bloodless and chapped from wheezing.  Too thin, yet swollen with useless fluid, so her legs distended the old, baggy pants she wore to sleep in.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She shook, even whilst lying still, coughing a bit now and then, wincing as if sore when she did.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Parker Vacumatic pen that I’d had since the 1930s turned from an elegant writing instrument to slag in my grip, the golden nib breaking on my skin, covering my fist in cold ink. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I woke up over and over for the next day.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As bad as I felt, my brain couldn’t seem to sleep any more, no matter what my body wanted.  No position was comfortable either in bed or on the couch.  My thoughts raced.  Would he decide I was more trouble than it was worth to keep if he couldn’t feed on me?  Was there any way I could find somewhere else to go in the state I was in?  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even if I wanted to go to a doctor my COBRA had long since run out.  And even if I could afford insurance, which I couldn’t, I was riddled with preexisting conditions.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Who </span>
  <em>
    <span>could </span>
  </em>
  <span>sleep? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I made myself get up and brush my teeth.  I was afraid to take a shower or bath, but I washed my face and a few other places.  There was a lot of tottering and noises no one as young as I was should be making, but I did it.  All of which left me feeling well enough to try and eat.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before attempting the kitchen I looked at myself.  I had gone downhill fast.  Even I didn’t want to look at me.  No wonder the vampire walked in and walked right back out.  His fastidiousness was probably vastly offended.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eating didn’t go very well, but I did drink some of the herbal shit, since having something hot felt good, too, and made toast that I forced myself to finish and keep down.  While I slowly ate I reread “In The Grove of the Dead Men,” a book about a young man British man, a former WWI soldier, living rough as he traveled across Europe, suffering from what we would now call PTSD while hunting down the German officer responsible for an atrocity he witnessed in France.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Twenty-some pages in I realized that it, too, was almost certainly written by Laufeyson, this time under the name Magnus Laing.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I picked up my phone and started making a list from memory, one of my still properly working parts.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The list was made up of all the writers I loved who were obscure, forgotten almost entirely by time.  Those working in the pulps, writing seedy noirs based on the jacket art rather than the other way around, those who back in the 19th century were published in serial form, cranky out ‘sensation tales’ and paid by the word, those who were hired by private publishers to create bespoke porn for privileged perverts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the years before the internet made privileged perverts of us all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Books that over the years I had collected, searched out, or found serendipitously in garage sales or overcrowded resale stores.  So many obscure, hard to find works by.- be they in old, yellowed paperbacks that made you sneeze from must and the powdering of the cheap paper, or nicer, bound copies, their jackets faded with time but the pages still firmly sewn in place.    </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Those authors that I loved the most.  The ones who seemed to be writing a dark and secret history about the sordid or mysterious or morbid or merely gothic parts of life that were forever around the corner from the sunlit world.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, not the ones who were writing about it.  The ones who seemed to be reporting from it.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, son of a bitch, but didn’t it seem like maybe, just maybe, Laufeyson was most of them?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tea and toast, and an apple I made myself eat a few slices of with peanut butter, even though the oily smell of the nuts made me slightly sick, gave me the energy to start going through the unpacked boxes of books, making stacks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was going to make him sign every one of them.  Just for the look on his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It could be my going away gift. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The next night I called a doctor of my acquaintance.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Unlike Zofia, he was in a sort of denial about what I was, though we had been intimate enough on occasion that even a person with no medical background should have been able to recognize that I didn’t breathe. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Or have a pulse.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He also owed me, for reasons that I prefer to keep private.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Most of my kind who are clever enough to survive know that it is in our best interest to keep a less than honorable physician as your creature, needing something from you, or owing something to you.  And none are more clever than I.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>While I waited to hear back from him I showered.  Twice.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel’s scent was sickly and grotesque, but it was the grotesque stink of the flax field that kept coming back to me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Proust was not wrong.  Even one as old and inhuman as I can be vulnerable to the memories invoked by those capricious senses of taste and even more so, scent.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We went to trade with the Rus.  I remember that much clearly.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My brother whose name I have long since forgotten and I traveled with a cohort of huscarls, as well as craftsmen and women, better-off farmers, and others, who like our family, had gone a-Viking and come back comfortable with gold and grain, yet hungry for the silks and spices and rarer goods that our eastern cousins were so oft fat withall.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The season was late for such a far journey going against the sun but something drove us.  Greed, certainly, yet more than merely that.  Needs that I no longer have a stomach for, or hatreds, or loves, or ambition.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We could winter in the wood houses of Kiev, with their jewel painted walls.  The cold’s teeth would be no sharper amongst the Rus than she was at home, and the novelty of their dark eye’d women would keep us warm enough.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No that is wrong.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I had a woman.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Minn kona</span>
  <em>
    <span>.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She rode with our company.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We neither of us rode back.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There was a field of flax in the night.  I remember that.  It bloomed golden under the moon even when all should have been harvested or dead with the cold, and a butterfly danced across the tops of the bushy, swaying plants.  A butterfly in the Haustmánuðu….  A butterfly that somehow I could see in the darkness.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was drunk and angry.  Angry with my brother.  Angry with my woman.  Angry with myself for not having taken more on the raids, for not having made better trades with the Rus, for having gone on this fool’s errand for my ingrate father, thus proving to be a fool.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For so many other things than I can recall, as well as hungers for estimation that seem pitiful in my memory.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I drank more, greedily of the raw liquor the Rus made, and with bitter cruelty stomped the still growing flax, attempting to kill that dancing, lovely butterfly. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shall I tell you a thing you must not do when in a land you do not know?  A land full of taboos different from those you know better than to cross?  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Can you surmise yourself?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A bit of wing fluttered where my boot had trod, but certainly, that was a breeze and not life.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A bit of wing stuck to that boot, and when I smeared it through the fallen flax to clean it off, it was iridescent beneath the weight of the moon’s light, before a cloud passed over, leaving me cold and drunk and alone in the dark.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The thing rose from the thick, sticky mud.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was dreadfully white, a sickly white no healthy darkness could hide, and the color of that field turned black with frost.  It was … I cannot see it in my mind, or feel its teeth, yet the sound of my flesh ripping beneath them, and the weakness and cold beyond cold of my life being drawn out, like an elk hung from a tree, it’s throat slashed so its blood would not make the meat turn sour.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Would be made into sausage.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Would dampen the earth for the gods.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My blood only served to fill the greedy maw of a monster, leaving me a void of dry and rasping hunger.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Minn kona</span>
  <em>
    <span>’s blood only served to fill me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She had eyes like polished elm and she fought me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I did not remember who she was, nor my brother, who fell beneath my teeth a week later when he thought to stalk me through the night and was stalked in turn.  I did not remember who I was, or anything from before the starving monster made and abandoned me, for a very long time.  And when I finally did it was too late for regret.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yet I still hate the sound of flax rustling in the night and the smell of its pretty little flowers</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And now I could not stop thinking about them.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>From across the garden I could hear Laurel coughing.  I knew the sound.  It wasn’t the sound of bad lungs or even a bad heart, both of which I have heard an infinite number of times over the centuries.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Thrusting open the windows I took a deep, hard inhale, even though I could smell without it.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She was sick, yes, but that wasn’t the problem.  That was not what was killing her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When the doctor called me back I let it go to voicemail.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I felt him kiss my throat in my sleep.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt good.  Not sexually, I wasn’t in any shape for that.  But to be touched.  To have someone close to me.  I wanted it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wanted it to be him, I admitted to myself, even if I would die before I admitted to him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which is funny, if you think about it.  Funny cause it’s true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I touched his hair without opening my eyes, “Are you going to feed on me anyway?  It’s probably kil-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He lifted me up, and I finally looked at him, and he was giving me the oddest look.  “No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then what-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As usual, he cut me off again, “We’re going to my house.  I’ll send Zofia to pack your things.  You must live with me, for now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Thou Wilt Stay My Spirit’s Hunger - Mervyn Peake</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Loki brings Laurel to his house, and then has a guest over.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>He had carried me through the garden.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?” I asked without being more specific.  There were any number of ‘whys’ Laufeyson could answer for me if he wanted, though I was pretty sure he wouldn’t.  I was so tired, but less than I had been all day.  Maybe I just needed a few breaths of fresh air.  God knew my apartment smelled musty, and of garbage I hadn’t been able to take out all week.  I wondered if the reek of it was part of what was making me so sick.  I wished, rather than wondered, because I knew it wasn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was shivering, though it wasn’t cold that night, but I felt as if a layer of skin had been ripped off of me, slowly so it didn’t hurt but leaving me exposed to the elements. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was warm.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Very warm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like he felt after he fed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you found a new renter for my place</span>
  <em>
    <span> already</span>
  </em>
  <span>?  Rude.  I’m not even dead.  Yet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He said nothing, but the tension in his arms pulled me closer against him so my nose was pushed to his shoulder, so I inhaled freshly laundered Oxford cloth and clean, sweatless skin.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um, I know that I stink.  Sorry.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A small grunt of agreement was all I got.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The moon was full and low and the air was so clear from lack of traffic and industry that it lit up the paths, the empty flower beds waiting to be filled, and the softly furred limbs of the trees and bushes.  I could see the green of them, it was so bright.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson’s shadow was so dark by comparison I thought of a line from a book - not one of his - that I loved and read over and over.  “‘He was treading in a pool of his own midnight,’” I thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or rather, I thought I thought it.  I must have spoken it aloud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Peake,” Laufeyson replied, his steps slowing in surprise, though never quite stopping.  “Though I always preferred, ‘I am clever enough to know I am clever.’”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would have thought, ‘oh, how I hate people,’ would be more your speed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He made a sound.  A soft, ratcheting noise.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not the snide, cruel laugh he had given when I had presumed he might want to fuck me.  Which had ended up being true.  Or rather, it had turned out that he did fuck me, if he had </span>
  <em>
    <span>wanted </span>
  </em>
  <span>to do it was still entirely up in the air.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was his true laugh.  Slight, yet it shook through him, and since he carried me close and rather tight, through me as well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are the strangest person I have met in a very long while, Laurel.”  He said each word, especially my name, slowly, as if giving himself time to think of what he was going to say next.  Then, “Which makes a kind of sense.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?” I asked again.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t answer. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After depositing me on the cold, leather couch in his living room, he walked out of the room in long strides, and came back with a blanket and a bowl.  “Can you sit up?” he asked, draping the blanket over my shoulders.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven’t tried in a while,” I said with as much bite as I could, but I pushed myself up slowly. “What is that?  It smells weird.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Unpleasant?” he asked. For someone who normally preferred ten words when three would do he was remarkably close-mouthed tonight.  Then, when I shook my head he did something so shocking that for a second I couldn’t process it.  He crouched in front of me and filled a big, silver spoon with some of the murky mess in the bowl and then lifted it up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you going to feed me?”  For the first time in my life, I really understood what it meant when someone said they were aghast.  I was so aghast I was practically aghost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a sigh implying swiftly lost patience, Laufeyson spoke as if to a child.  “You need some nourishment.  The bowl is far too hot for you to hold in your current state, though if you should like a lapful of czernina please feel free to take it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not especially hungry, which I think I men-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Green eyes shouldn’t have been able to look as cold as his did, as if rimed with frost, and he filled my mouth before I could stop talking.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was sweet and sour and metallic and the texture was unpleasant.  I could recognise bits of fruit like raisins and apples, that were just on the verge of losing all shape, and bits of meat, gamy and oily.  Nothing about it was like anything I had eaten or wanted to eat before.  Let alone while being fed like a baby by a dead man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was humiliating even beyond my rather large capacity for embarrassment to be fed this way by Laufeyson of all people.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s not a person, I reminded myself.  Jerking back, I glared at him, and he made a great show of patience, though his cold eyes studied me, as if waiting to see something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then the hot, sludgy stuff reached my stomach.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Warmth, not a lot of it, but more than I felt in while, spread through me.  My breathing, which had been rough for so long I’d gotten used to it,  started to be a little easier.  Weirdly, that easing spread through me.  That tiny loosening of my chest, of my stiff muscles, of my heavy, swollen legs, ached.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ached with life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“More,” was all I could say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I let him feed me, knowing that if I were to try and feed myself I would end up poring that disgusting, delicious mess down my throat, covering myself with it.  The feeding of me, rather than on me for a change, was less embarrassing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel quickly finished feeding, doing all but licking the bowl which I was inclined to hold up for her to do yet I knew it would harm her pride to do so.  Remind her too much of the first ‘meal’ she took here. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Stale crackers and cocktail olives.  I am ever the generous, gracious host.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m tired.”  Her voice was stronger than it had been before. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Not uncommon with a full belly.  Go to sleep.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I set the bowl carefully on the carpet, hoping drippings of duck blood wouldn’t end up on my Heriz rug, and lifted her thick, swollen legs so she had to lay down.  “Why?” she asked again, this time her voice faint, and I knew she was asleep before I stood up.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her breath rasped less.  Her heart beat more as it should.  Her blood moved more comfortably in her veins.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When my doctor arrived - I call him that in not the sense a human might, that he is the physician that cares for my person, but in the sense that I own him - I met him on the porch so as to not disturb her rest.  She would have great need of it.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He was harried-looking, with the deep, pouchy bags beneath his eyes dark with exhaustion, and his legs seemed uncertain about carrying him from his vulgar car to my porch.  The once expensive casualwear he wore was no longer quite in fashion and fit him poorly as his body had grown soft in some areas and spindly in others since he had purchased them.  Though he was no more than fifty, he had the energy and aura of a very old man.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not the wisdom or heart of one, however.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Had he been a different manner of creature one might have assumed he had worn himself to this state in the care of his fellow humans during those dark, plague-ridden days.  Truthfully, they were better off without him, though he was more than competent.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>His age’d appearance and lifeless walk came from indulging himself in a life of petty vice, drug abuse, and sex workers who were probably wildly underpaid for submitting to his elaborate and dangerous perversions.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He had been beautiful and even decent once, but those days were long over…    </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Lo-” he started to say my name.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I raised a hand, “Robert, how often have I told you?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Gritting his teeth, he said, “Mr. Laufeyson, what the fuck do you mean dragging me here at this time of night?”  Then he gave me a leering kind of smile and reached into the large duffle bag he carried, pulling out a pouch of blood and waved it at me, “I’m not Door Dash, you know,” he said with a leer, making it clear that he was delighted in the idea that he would be my ‘supplier.’</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ha.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was down the stairs, his back on the ground, his unpleasantly tumescent penis beneath my bootheel, faster than he could see.  “While I know you find a certain enjoyable frisson from this sort of thing, it will be very, very long before you enjoy anything below the waist if I stomp now, Robert.”   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was boring to have to play these little dominance games with him.  That said, I still raised my foot a little, enough to make him babble his apologies.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Whilst he gathered himself, I asked, “Even if I were inclined to bottle feeding, as it were, why would I ask you to bring the rest of your equipment?  Think, Robert.  You do still have to have a little electrical activity in your brain to function, do you not?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel was still deeply, deeply asleep when he finished setting up.  “Is she drugged?” he asked, licking his lips at the thought as he put on a medical mask and face shield before approaching her.  I was, of course, a sterile environment so he was in no danger of that kind from me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No.  Additionally, she is none of your concern, other than as your patient for the moment.”  I sat on my favorite chair, legs crossed, and motioned for him to begin.  “No more flesh revealed than is strictly necessary, Bobby.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I pulled the bundle of cash he expected from my jacket pocket and put it on the mantel so he could see himself out when he was done.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Because we had been talking about him, I had gotten a collection of Peake’s poetry from a shelf and read whilst waiting for Robert to finish.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Out of the chaos of my doubt</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And the chaos of my art</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I turn to y -”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Robert made a sound, looking down at Laurel with disquiet, solemnly putting down whatever medical instrument he had just used on her.  Something to gauge her body temperature, perhaps.  He then pulled out a stethoscope, opening her pajama top - which displayed winsome goats to my surprise.  “No farther than needed,” I cautioned him, returning to my book.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After a few more items were used on her, Robert crossed the room, pushing my book aside, or trying to, “This is too much!  What the hell have you done to her?  That woman needs to be in a hospital!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I looked at him briefly.  There was true outrage in his face, sitting uneasily on his jaded features, and I found myself mildly touched that something in Laurel’s pitiable condition had managed to find a lonely strand of integrity within him.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That said, I gave him a quelling look, and he stepped back, eyes wide with fear.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No, she does not.  Stop pretending to honor your oaths and long-dead ideals, give her the transfusion, take your money and go.”  The poetry was better than I recalled, and I made a mental note to find my old copies of the Gormenghast novels. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Because he was well trained, Robert did as he was told. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel did not wake the whole time, even when he, with admirable gentleness, slid the needle into her vein she did little more than frown in her sleep.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After he was finished and had packed up his effects, Robert turned to stare at me, wanting to say something, to ask questions, to object again to whatever I was doing to this poor, dying creature on my sofa.  But because he is devoted to his own preservation above all things he refrained.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Once I finished reading I carried Laurel upstairs.  She sounded much better, and her color was healthier, though she still smelled like a midden heap.  Despite that, I put her on the daybed in my own room.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was almost dawn when I undressed and got into bed.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I lay on my side and looked at the floor.  My curtains were parted just half an inch so at sunrise a ray of light would cut across the room, illuminating everything.  Over time I had learned that I could look at things lit by the light of the sun for a few moments before the pressure burned.  If I did it for too long I would go blind and it would take days and a lot of blood before I could see again.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The light brushed over Laurel’s face, gilding her skin, catching a little, otherwise invisible, copper in her dark, dark hair.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her lips were still too pale, but even asleep there was a stubborn jut to her little chin.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Tomorrow I would put her in the bedroom farthest from mine.  Though none of them had been used during my residency, each room was cleaned and had fresh linens put on every other week.  It was well-appointed, tasteful, and had blackout curtains, so would be far more comfortable for her than the admittedly shabby space she rented from me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>With a jerk, I closed my bed curtains and let the weight of the light outside push me down into the torpor my kind call sleep.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The poem by Mervyn Peake  Loki gets interrupted reading :</p><p>OUT OF THE CHAOS OF MY DOUBT<br/>Out of the chaos of my doubt<br/>And the chaos of my art<br/>I turn to you inevitably<br/>As the needle to the pole<br/>Turns . . . as the cold brain to the soul<br/>Turns in its uncertainty;</p><p>So I turn and long for you;<br/>So I long for you, and turn<br/>To the love that through my chaos<br/>Burns a truth,<br/>And lights my path.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Govern well thy appetite, lest Sin / Surprise thee, and her black attendant Death - John Milton, Paradise Lost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Short, far from sweet</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span> After sunset I rose, dressed, and sat nearby roughly sketching an outline for a book idea I had, always waiting.  Under most circumstances, the cough would have woken her, or so I would presume, but if it did more than cause her eyelids to flutter it was not apparent.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A deep rusty froth bubbled to her lips once or twice.  Rather than having it stain one of my better blankets I sacrificed an old t-shirt to wipe them clean.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Once, a dark dream disturbing her caused her to flail, reaching to who knows what phantom.  I braceleted her wrists with my hands, my thumb soothing over her chaotic pulses until she was still again, her sleep now deeper, now quieter, now stiller.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laying her hands gently down I was surprised to feel myself smile.  The muscles of my face, more used to the smile’s cruel brother the smirk, ached.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I woke up thinking I was in a coffin.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deep in a squared-off sofa, with tufted leather all about me with my hands crossed over my chest, flat on my back with a small pillow beneath my head, and my all equalled ‘casket’ in my foggy mind.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then a shadow rose at my side, and Laufeyson leaned over me, holding the back and arm of the couch so I was effectively caged by him.  He cocked his head to the right and then the left, like an animal hearing something.  Or maybe not hearing something.  There was an odd look on his face, one that I had never seen before, and his eyes gleamed in the light from the lit fireplace.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wondered if the fire was why I wasn’t cold, because I wasn’t.  For the first time in months I wasn’t cold.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wasn’t warm, either.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His braid slithered over his shoulder and hung like a rope waiting to turned into a noose, nearly brushing my face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a smile on his face.  A smile for me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s the matter?  Did I drool on myself in my sleep?” I asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My voice sounded so strange.  Hollow and raspy and terribly soft, so soft I almost couldn’t hear myself.  I had been coughing before, so maybe I did some damage to my throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The right corner of his mouth rose higher.  “Far more than that. How do you feel?”  He leaned closer and closer down, his arms bent strangely, his face scant inches above mine when he finished speaking.  Like a beautiful, curious spider.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I should have felt suffocated, needing air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But I didn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that was when I knew.  He could see it dawning in my eyes.  Pushing back up he softly stroked my cheek with the backs of his fingers before walking away.  “You are a mess, and you stink of the last of your life,” he said over his shoulder.  “You can use the shower in the guest room.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I would have screamed, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without breathing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My kind are made and not born.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It is not a scattershot, effortless thing to kill in such a way that it recreates the one which has been murdered into something that defies all laws of reason and heaven.  Otherwise the world would be littered with hungry revenants, fighting like dogs for the last of humankind and draining each other for spite, as our own blood does not nourish.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We are selfish of our powers, and resentful of each other most of the time, so making is rare.  Most of us will live our nights without even considering it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>However…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Well…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Amongst your kind condoms </span>
  </em>
  <span>do</span>
  <em>
    <span> break, after all.  Accidents can happen to anyone.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Later, I found out I died at to midnight. </p><p>God, I hate being so on the nose.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hoping the next chapter - a full-sized one - will be up by the end of the weekend.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. To eat is to survive to be hungry. - Alan Watts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Loki thinks and Laurel gets cleaned up.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Through black magic, through sorcerous pacts with demonic forces, through the bites of certain animals on a moonlit night, through sharing the blood of the undead after mixing it with your own.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>From being the seven son of the seventh son, or daughter of daughters for that matter, who had been weaned before time, having stolen the ropes used to lower a casket into the ground, any manner of suicide, eating an animal that was killed accidentally, dying in childbirth, being drained and then fed blood by one of my kind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>By being born under the light of the full moon, having the winds of the Steppes blow over your dead, abandoned body, dying of an illness that caused bleeding, being descended of the daughters of Lilith, being an evil doer who dies of madness brought upon by their evil, being given improper or incomplete burial rights or being buried in unconsecrated earth.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Due to a cat jumping over a fresh grave, drinking witches blood and then stealing milk and gold, by a shadow stealing the life of the one that casts it, incest between mother and son, possession of a corpse by the spirit of a murderer or one who has been murdered.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Because of alchemy, curses, blessings gone wrong, or simply, being born with a caul, red birthmark, or red hair and then dying before your time.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>In my so many years upon this cold earth I have met vampires who claim to have been created in each of these ways, though must blood-drinkers have assured me they had intentionally procreated.  It’s much more flattering, is it not, to believe you were wanted?  Specifically selected from the cannaille to join the yellow-eyed predators that prowl in the darkness at the edge of humanities warm hearthfires?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe all the others told the truth of how </span>
  </em>
  <span>they</span>
  <em>
    <span> were brought into this unlife.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe they all lied.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My kind have been many, though little more than a drop in humanity’s ocean, and not matter how we are made, we all live through ugly hunger.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not for blood, but for time.  More and more time.  More than we could ever be meant to have or sanely experience.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I do not know exactly </span>
  </em>
  <span>how </span>
  <em>
    <span>I was made, though I do know </span>
  </em>
  <span>why.</span>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For cruelty.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For a punishment.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When that lonely, outcast monster turned me into what I am, it did so to rip me from my life, to leave me a hungry, untutored draugr who would seek out my family by instinct and then kill them by it as well.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For the death of a butterfly.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>An already dying woman being fed upon regularly during a time of pestilence seems ripe to be added to the list of ways to make one of my kind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As I watched Laurel totter to her feet, unsteady as a new colt as she learned to move in a body that followed no rules of biology, I felt no fatherly emotion stir my heart.  As the blankets fell away all I felt was a little pitying disgust.  Her body had voided itself of the food it could no longer digest, and the fluids that had swollen her poor legs had evacuated through her skin.  The stench was even worse than it had been before, and I could see she was revulsed as well.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What did you do to me?” she whispered.  Even my hearing strained for the words.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hastily stooping to gather the soiled blankets before their foulness could destroy my carpet, I shook my head, “Nothing planned.  My apologies.  You really should take that showe-”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>By god she was fast for one so newly risen!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And I was unprepared, and off kilter in my crouch.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A surprisingly strong hand grasped my throat and propelled me backwards, kneeling on me, trying to shout, trying to curse, trying to make me feel something.  Guilt, perhaps?  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Knowing Laurel’s dreams I know that she thought of herself those last months as a different woman than the one she had been before her body committed treason and the world caved in to bury her.  But she was not.  Rather, like those stinking, befouled blankets that now smeared over my sweater and hands, she was only wearing the illness and misery.  The woman who never failed to answer disrespect with disrespect, met her own fear with wit, that woman was who held my throat and demanded I feel something.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I lay beneath her, supine and submissive.  Best to let her get it out of her system for the time being.  To be what we are is truly dreadful, until it is not.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Being able to speak without air was not a problem for Laufeyson.  He did not thrash or do anything as undignified as try to get me to release him.  He met my angry gaze and the words I couldn’t get out with bored passivity.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was not my intent,” was all he said, as if it were the most apparent thing in the world.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I believed him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was fine for dinner, not so much family.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Abruptly he flipped us over, pushing my hand away with no effort, laying full out on me and crushing those soggy, gross blankets between us and probably ruining his expensive casual wear.  “It was not my intent, but done is done and you need not fear I will abandon you to starve in these empty streets or to feed on the pitiable wretches who must live on them even in plague times.  I shall,” his voice and eyes softened and he touched my mouth with soft fingertips, “provide.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, faster than sight, he was up, looking down at me, “But you really must shower and change clothing.  Once you smell better you can harangue me for centuries to come.”   Then he lifted the front of his cashmere sweater and sniffed at it, rearing back from it like an appalled Siamese, “Ugh.  Once I smell better as well.  Forget the guest shower, mine is closer.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Turning on the heel of a perfectly shined black shoe, he sauntered away at normal pace, the nasty blankets in his hands.  I rolled on to my side and watched him put them into a laundry chute with a brass handle that I had never noticed before next to his closet and then started to strip himself, muttering something about giving Zofia a bonus as he shoved his own dirty clothes in as well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I knew that I shouldn’t have been able to make out what he was saying, and that he was speaking in English because I </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  Normally he muttered in something that might have been Scandinavian, or Russian.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well?” he said, opening the door to what was his master bathroom, which I had never been allowed to use or even seen, Laufeyson gestured for me to follow him in, untying his braid as he went.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t speak.  I kept moving fast enough that it made me a little dizzy.  I had been accidentally made into one of the undead when I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be one of the completely</span>
  <em>
    <span> alive </span>
  </em>
  <span>any more.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I cannot explain to you how it feels to wake up in your body and have it so altered that you don’t know how to navigate in it.  From force of habit the lungs want to breathe, but the part of your brain that runs them knows better.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Your mind knows that you can’t be stronger, can’t be faster, but your muscles know better, your bones, too.  You need to be warm.  Because being alive is energy and energy is heat, but you are dead and so you are room temperature which makes it hard to tell where you end and the rest of the world begins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing that normally hurts does, but things that don’t do. Your teeth, though not like a toothache or your gums being sore.  Your nails grow, and since my nails were bitten before I now had jagged claws that I kept scratching myself with.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I didn’t bleed, though the white marks were deep and disturbing, and then were gone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Please realize that I was nowhere near sane at that moment and the jokes are from later. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I stank, I was dirty, and what blood was in me juddered and sloughed through my veins and pulled in the direction Laufeyson had gone.  I got up and moved as carefully as I could after him.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The master bath of Laufeyson’s house is just as splendid and lavish as you might imagine.  Which I found out later, since by the time I made it in there was so much steam that if he hadn’t reached out of the shower and pulled me in I probably would have walked straight into the toilet.  In a few seconds my eyes adjusted.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rather than having to step over anything to get in, the shower was an entire room to itself inside of the room.  Multiple showerheads were at different heights, and one near the top that only let out steam.  A wooden bench was opposite from them, as well as a narrow shelf that ran the length of the wall filled with haircare products.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Filled. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something about the sight of all of those bottles of … stuff … broke me down.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I started to laugh.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had no breath still, so I heaved and shook and nothing happened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I laughed without laughing all the harder.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I shook and shook, as steam collected and ran as water down my body and the stink of me rose and that was funny, too.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything was so funny.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I invited you in to get clean, not to succumb to hysteria,” Laufeyson said, wrapping an arm around my ribs and pulling me against his slick, water-hot body.  “Most newly born creatures are gawkish and assailable, I must remind myself.  So be still, and calm yourself.”  As he spoke he took a big, natural sponge, dripping with lather and began to clean me, starting with my hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The soap smelled of juniper, pepper, salt, and tangerine.  It was the scent he usually wore but now I could smell each part of it, including elements I had no name for, all slightly different since I was smelling them on myself rather than on him.  “It’s called ‘Where He Lay,” he said, though I was more concerned with the soft scrape of the sponge over my fingers, my palms, down the tender skin on the inside of my arms.  “Timothy Han makes it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I tried to speak.  Even though the steam made trying to pull in air oddly easier almost nothing came out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here,” he put his free hand, spread broad, across my abdomen and compressed slowly while breathing in behind me, “follow me.  Soon you will learn to do without the intellectual fallacy of needing breath to speak.”  So close that his long, sopping hair fell over my shoulders, he whispered in my ear, “We are not alive, the engines that keep the living from falling into decay have nothing to do with how we move through the world.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The words eked out of me.  “That’s from one of your novels, ‘Where He Lay.’  One that you wrote when you called yourself Lother Løgnmaker.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He froze for a moment, then went back to slowly washing me, “Heh, you know that was me?  Laurel, you are too clever.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He cleaned my breasts, my nipples tightening at the rasp, then my belly.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I started to laugh again, and now I could not stop.  “I’m the dumbest dead girl in the world.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As I laughed Laufeyson turned me to rinse the soap under a tap of hot water that felt velvety with my intense, not yet tuned senses, just as I could feel each individual tile under my weirdly sensitive feet.  Rinsing the sponge and soaped it again, while we were under the water he knelt behind me and cleaned my ass. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before or after I might have been embarrassed, but he was impassive and precise and I was disoriented and still shuddering with laughter.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Turning me, he again rinsed and soaped the sponge, lifted one of my feet to sit on his thigh, and cleaned my leg, and then between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My toes dug into the ridged muscle of his thigh, and I grabbed his shoulders.  Every light brush of the sponge was harrowingly erotic.  I had gone from near hysteria to completely aroused in less than one of my non-existent heartbeats.  My cunt ached and prickled with the speed it had gone soft and wet and throbbing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not to worry about that, either,” he said, now brushing with a firmer hand.  “You will grow more balanced with time.  For a time your body will revel in its freedom from the burdens and consequences of life, and your hungers will rule your sense of proportion.”  Thrusting two fingers deep into me, while circling my clit with a corner of the sponge, he added, “Let them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked up at me, the water pouring over his face, blessing every perfect line, and the cruel curve of his lips.  The sluice of it over his shoulders and chest, and long legs, was like rain falling over a marble statue, which he was nearly as human as.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Under eyelashes wet eyelashes, his eyes were vast and devouring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, with deft rubs and roughness of the sponge and encouraging words, he brought me to an orgasm that made me again forget how he had taught me to speak.   </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After he dried me completely as I sat like a broken doll on the little wood bench, he slipped me naked between the sheets of his bed.  I wasn’t merely tired.  I was enervated, and trust me that is not a term I had ever used even in my mind before, but it popped up in my disordered thoughts and all I could think is, Laufeyson is catching and not only the fangs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thinking that, I weakly reached up to touch my bicuspids, but he took my hand and tucked it under the blankets as he sat beside me.  “Now do not think you will sleep here regularly.  I find another body beside me distastefully intimate.  Yet this is a special occasion, so rest.”  While he spoke he stroked my throat with his fingertips as I drifted off, “When you wake I will have someone lovely for you to eat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. There is nothing like a morning funeral for sharpening the appetite for lunch - Arthur Marshall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Loki buys dinner</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though there were few of us in the Middle West - or anywhere in the world, but fewer still here than other places I have lived - there are enough so there is also a small community of those who serve our needs.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Some for a price, others for the thrill, many for both.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I had never used these services.  Call me proud, call me arrogant, I am both and more ugly things, but in this case, it is for me that the obtaining is part of the savour in the blood.  Making a ‘date’ for dinner is as boring a prospect as I can imagine, no matter how popular it may be with others.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I do not judge.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yes, I do.  Though not about that.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Having never sought the services of a </span>
  </em>
  <span>blodarbeider</span>
  <em>
    <span> I had no good idea how to find one.  It took a number of hours, pushing past dawn and my exhaustion, on the deep web, looking for the information I knew was there and then negotiating.  The comprehensive reach of the contagion was such that those already rare beings offering their services were either quarantining themselves or had raised their prices to the skies and were terribly busy.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Also, I did not want just anyone to be Laurel’s first.  Though I considered compelling one of my former meals to return I felt that might be against what I was sure would be her tender scruples.  Not that she’d have them for long.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Cold blood turns the soul cold soon enough.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Eventually I found a young man that seemed appealing enough, and willing to travel since he was not local and he would have several hours’ drive to reach us.  He worked for both cash and pleasure, as well as being wonderfully pretty with perfect, deep brown skin and long, long dark hair which I knew would appeal to her.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I could practically see her pushing that hair aside as she straddled him, unsure, but ravenous, burying her new teeth in his throat, perhaps worrying the flesh a bit in her eagerness before moving to suck.  As I stood close by to make certain she did not take things too far, to guide her as she needed and protect him from her inexperience and hunger.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Also, he was very excited at the idea of being someone’s first time and so offered a substantial discount.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Arranging to meet him for prepayment, exhausted, and oppressed by the weight of the sun beating on my home I stripped and climbed into my fortunately large bed, as far from Laurel as I could manage without discomfort to myself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I woke up, or whatever it was, when Laufeyson closed the door behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wasn’t the least bit disoriented.  I knew exactly where I was, I could remember everything that happened, all with perfect clarity.  My brain had never worked better.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not so sure about my sanity, but it was early days then.  Though I won’t say I was in denial, my efficiently working brain wasn’t coping.  Also, when I tried to think about how my brain </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span> be working it shied away from that as well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though I hadn’t kept any of the small amount I’d eaten before … it … happened, I wasn’t hungry.  Even when I was sick I’d been at least a little hungry in the mornings, enough for a few bites.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bites.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ha.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not caring what he thought I tottered a bit more steadily back into Laufeyson’s bathroom and used his toothbrush. God, how weird that was.  I swear I felt every bristle as if crossed and scraped and cleaned and teased my teeth.  I went slower and slower.  It was the most erotic toothbrushing imaginable and I spit foam laughing at myself even as indulged.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>My hair was a wild mess, but I knew he would never forgive me for using his hairbrush so I slicked it down, and then stared at my reflection.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I don’t know what looked back at me</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Vampires can see their reflection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they shouldn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I slammed the bottom of the heavy, blown glass tumbler I had just used to rinse my mouth into the mirror.  Rather than falling apart, the cracks radiated outward like a spiderweb, finer and finer so I could barely even make out the color of my pale face and brown hair, let alone any feature.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then I rifled slowly through his closet.  Each piece was a story, a symphony, an overwhelming series of textures and what might have dreams.  I rubbed them on my face, on my neck, on my chest, not able to not.  Eventually, I found a heavy, green silk shirt that was soft enough and new enough that even my now terribly sensitive skin could stand it, randomly pulled a book from one of the shelves near the fireplace - the merrily crackling fireplace, that fucker - propped myself on his pillows and started to read.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The words on the page and the feeling of the paper were the only things that seemed no different now and I let myself fall into them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A little later, the doorbell rang.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” I said, setting the book face down across my lap, “I don’t have any appetite right now.  I couldn’t eat a thing.  Not,” I added, turning to look at the lovely man that was still sitting patiently waiting for someone to take a bite of him, “that you’re a thing, Garish. Sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He raised a hand, “No worries,” he said with a wide grin.  He had a Texas accent and even from across the room he smelled wonderful.  Like a just bitten-into apple, the kind where the nectar soaks your finger and your mouth, and freshly ground black pepper at the same time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure you are as delicious as you are good lookin-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the first time, I now saw Laufeyson show impatience, a level of annoyance past pique, and real frustration.  Pushing his hand through his hair, he raised not just his eyes but his face to the heavens, “That is not possible,” he said in a calm voice that showed signs of cracking around the edges.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t remember the last time I had been this happy.  Being dead might turn out to be a hoot, if only for my new found, preternatural power - getting under Loki’s skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We are appetite itself.  The embodiment of craving.  Of the need to devour so absolute that even death cannot keep us from doing all we can to try and reach consummation.  Which we cannot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The last he spit out, his head turning quickly to burn me with a glare.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was in no way sorry.  I had never been less sorry.  Ignoring him, I picked up the short story collection and started back on Margaret Irwin’s “The Book,” which I had never read before and was enjoying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For what was a handful of breaths from the lovely young man that glare did not waver.  Then Laufeyson turned on his heel with a sound of disgust, crossed the room, lifted the lovely, young man, and buried his teeth deep into his throat.  I could hear his eating, each lap of his tongue and suck of his lips even over the intense moans of pleasure coming from his dinner.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Normally he was a fastidious eater, so I knew he was putting on a little show for me.  Maybe hoping to stimulate my hunger.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t work.  Suddenly I was terribly tired, perhaps because I hadn’t eaten, or maybe from the energy I was expending forcing myself to not think about what had happened to me and what that meant for the future, but the book dropped from my hands and I was … dormant again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I sent off the </span>
  </em>
  <span>blodarbeider</span>
  <em>
    <span> with a generous tip and a warning about spreading any word that there was a newly made undead.  I could not compel him, as it was considered close to taboo amongst our little tribe to tamper with the minds of those offer their services.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Swigging lustily from the bottle of Pedialyte he’d brought for himself, he asked, “Would you like to make an appointment for later?  Give her a chance to get used to the idea?  I’d be happy to shift a few things around.”   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I had seen and smelled his eagerness when he’d seen Laurel, propped in bed, her fangs long enough to show on her lower lip.  She may claim to have no appetite but they told a different story.  Had her already shrunken stomach atrophied in death, leaving her still thinking enough as human to not recognise hunger?  Never having been around a newly created vampire I had no idea but it went against all of the stories I knew as well as my own experience.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perverse woman!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No,” I said, closing the door in his face.  Clearly, he was not savory enough for her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She might wake again, hungry, I thought, climbing the stairs back to my bedchamber that she still inhabited.  As tired as she looked I could not move her.  Even though she was wearing one of my shirts without asking permission.  Which would not have been granted.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was silk.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I knew that should an emergency arise I could feed her on the blood left by the formerly good Doctor Laing.  That said, I hesitated to do it.  I did not want to start Laurel with bad habits of human morality.  Not only was ‘bottle feeding’ less healthy, but I had also seen for myself the deleterious effect it could have on one’s hair, much as having worms does on a hound’s fur.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shuddering at the thought I forced myself not to touch my own mane and took the stairs two at a time, filled with energy from my feed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps I should reconsider my stance on blood workers.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though it was still early in the dark Laurel was still asleep.  I sat beside her and looked carefully.  Having avoided too much contact with other undead I could not see anything wrong with her, and I loathed myself for the minuscule amount of fretting I found myself experiencing.  Her creation was - as far as my understanding of such things - unique, and perhaps flawed.  What if she could not feed, but withered away before my eyes?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I hated the idea of failure.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We needed to speak.  If she was keeping herself from feeding I needed to know.  The idea of forcing her was repugnant but not beyond me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Laurel,” I ordered.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span> She did not move.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She should not have been so deeply asleep.  Not while the moon was so full as it was that night.  Not while it was the shank of the evening.  That she might be ill, or something in her weird creation might make her weak or sickly still bothered me.  Intended or not she was my get.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Laurel?”  I leaned over closer, not sure why I was doing so.  There was no heartbeat or breath to listen for.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There is a low rumble of energy that our kind give off that can only be detected by contact.  Like the purr of a fine engine.  Laying my hand on her sternum I am not especially ashamed to admit relief that I felt it there, deep and steady.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I may have sighed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her eyes opened, meeting mine.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For a moment we stared at each other.  Did she see something in me different than what there was in our other encounters?  I know that I saw that same woman that I had drunk and fenced and engaged with.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Those brown, brown eyes, dark and warm as any pretty night.  Brushing the wild thicket of her short hair from her face I leaned close.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m starving,” she said, matter of factly, like a splash of water to the ego.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Of course.  I can call Garish back, he should not be far-”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then she was on me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Strong with hunger, agile with need, I would say she caught me off guard but foolishly I had no guard for her to get around.  In that moment I was as open as a broken door in any abandoned house.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Bowled over, her knees tightly squeezing my waist, her hands pinning my wrists to the coverlet, my shock and perhaps… </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No, my shock alone kept me from stopping her from the bite.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We do not feed on our own kind.  Our blood is weak and displeasing, unless we had very, very recently fed.  As I had.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her excruciating little fangs opened me with one hard snap.  I arched up, as open to the gorgeous pain as I was to the rest of her attack.  My cock ached, no, it hurt, so quickly had it hardened, and through my trousers its length still found the notch of her cunt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shudders of agony and pleasure wracked my body from either end as she pulled her teeth free, ground hard against my matching hardness, and started to suck.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Reader, I felt it </span>
  </em>
  <span>everywhere</span>
  <em>
    <span>.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Only once before had I been taken so roughly and completely, in that field of flax.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A shameful honesty that tastes of dust makes me tell you that as much as I was sickened in that first taking I adored this one.  Letting go of my hands, Laurel fisted my hair, pulling hard.  Reaching between us with lust weakened hands, with a few fumbles I freed myself and she lifted to let me slide into her quickly warming, grasping cunt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Gasping, my arms fell to our sides, and other than offering her more of my arched neck I could do nothing but be deliciously used.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When my orgasm ripped through me it turned my blood sweet as honey, so it overflowed her mouth, drenching her, soaking me.  She kissed me with that full mouth, and blood satiated though still unfulfilled.  I was hard again quickly and now she let me push her over by the hip, and I lapped her neck and breasts clean as I fucked her too slowly as revenge for making me feel such things.  Until she begged.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then I gave her completion.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The pull of the shared blood between us drew me to a second climax.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laying flat upon her, trembling, I whispered in her ear, “What are you?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To my surprise she answered, “An accident that found a place to happen.”  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then she shoved me away and still filthy with blood rolled away, curled up, and fell dormant.</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. “The human mind is a lucky little local, passing accident which was totally unforeseen, and condemned to disappear with this earth and to recommence perhaps here or elsewhere…”  Guy de Maupassant</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Laurel tells us a little about herself</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>I lie. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I know I told you that.  Maybe you forgot.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe you didn’t forget and you thought that I only lied to Laufeyson.  Or I had only lied about that one thing.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh no.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I lie.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Seven years before Covid</span>
  </em>
  <span>…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“5 6 7 8!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The old garage where they rented rehearsal space had brilliant acoustics and was freaking freezing.  The members of the band currently known as Turnpike Baristas were almost invisible as steam roiled out of their mouths and their sweating skin.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laurel was hurrying them through practice.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knew it was pissing off Marissa and Ari, but she didn’t care.  They had been warned that when they hadn’t agreed to reschedule that she was going to be like this.  Dre got it, he just kept his head down over his bass, trying not to laugh as she ripped through his new arrangement of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hazy Shade of Winter</span>
  </em>
  <span> like it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>Rap God</span>
  </em>
  <span> and the other two got madder and madder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ari because her drumming couldn’t keep up with Laurel’s guitar and singing.  Marissa because she thought it was irresponsible for her to want to take a night off shortly before they had a big show, just to go see an author read a book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If it was for something cool, I could understand it, but it’s a fucking book.  That you already read.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laurel just kept her head down and smiled to herself.  </span>
  <span>She loved that book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She loved the author, too.  In the way you can only love someone that mostly exists in your head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>…...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I used to look different.  Why be modest?  I was pretty.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had long, hair I dyed cherry red and long legs that weren’t too skinny from being sick and then suddenly tightly swollen and misshapen with fluids that wept from them, like they became and I knew how to be sexy, from years of fronting bands and my face wasn’t haggard and my eyes weren’t sunken. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I got that front row seat.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he looked right at me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>…...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bookstore had pushed fixtures out of the way and set up rows of folding chairs, a lectern, and a table for signing books after the reading was done.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laurel walked past the stacks of Loki Laufeyson’s books pyramided for sale since she already owned all of them, gliding easily through the crowd, since a busy bookstore was nothing compared with a packed bar, stalked with a possessiveness to the front and took the seat in the front row just to the right of lectern.  He would get a better look at her legs if she was there, not in any denial about her best feature.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or what would be her best feature once she warmed up.  Bare legs in February idiotic, but she wasn’t going to miss a trick.  Draping her fake fur jacket over the back of the seat, and putting her bag of books to be signed under it so nothing would block her, she settled in to wait. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Several booksellers came over to see if she wanted one of the plastic cups of shitty cabernet they were serving, so she figured she looked pretty good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the crowd finally finished filling in - it was a pretty good turn out for an author with mostly a cult following - the manager of the store gave a pithy, rather amusing introduction.  When Loki took the lectern Laurel worried that pretty good was not good enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was so much more beautiful in person. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was so much </span>
  <em>
    <span>more</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he opened his heavily tabbed copy of the book he was going to be reading from, pushed his glass up with one long finger to their bridge, and gave a blank-faced nod of thanks to the store manager for the introduction, Laurel was more and more diminished.  Looking around, she was shocked that on the faces of the rest of the attendees there was only a kind of pleasant anticipation. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>In the time of Covid…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson read beautifully.  Not every author does.  It is, after all, a solitary art and the same impulse that leads someone to sit alone for hours every day with empty pages and their own thoughts doesn’t usually lend itself to a sense of performance.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That rich, sonorous voice was a gift to a live reading.  Velvety and insinuating when reading the dialog of the femme fatale, growling and raspy for her doomed lover, crisp and slightly amused for the rest.  You could tell that last, ironic tone was his own jaded view of his own work.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe it is how I remember it now that I know him.  At the time I was rapt.  Any thought of seductiveness on my part gone as I leaned farther forward, my eyes probably huge, thrilled and easily the one seduced and then discarded and then forgotten, all without his looking at me even once, even though I was at most two feet away from him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a containedness to him, that even as he gestured, and sneered and smirked and frowned, even as he showed off that each character was a part of him, he also showed that in some way he was not really present at all.  His writing interacted with the world, while he remained somewhere else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Again, this is probably not how I felt at the time, I don’t really remember how I felt back then when I was just another stupid, romantic girl.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That’s a lie.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the reading and a well-earned, enthusiastic round of applause the author took questions.  Laurel had a long mental list of them.  How had he decided that in </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Serpent’s Path </span>
  </em>
  <span>that it should take place entirely in one room other than one scene?  Was Raleigh from</span>
  <em>
    <span> Book of Liars</span>
  </em>
  <span> the same character as Roe from </span>
  <em>
    <span>Preservation</span>
  </em>
  <span>?  Also, when he had entirely re-written </span>
  <em>
    <span>Preservation</span>
  </em>
  <span> had Carolyn originally been a more prominent character?  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And was the end of the new book meant to be seen as a supernatural occurrence, or was Jon losing his mind?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She didn’t ask a one of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rather than pull out the stack of first editions that she brought to be signed, Laurel kept them in her bag and stood quietly in line with her copy of the latest book waiting her turn.  While everyone else gushed and chatted and sipped wine and seemed to be having a fine night out at the bookstore, something about the whole evening was harrowing for her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she reached the table one of the booksellers took her book, flipped it open to the title page without looking, and slid it in front of Loki.  “Would you like it to be personalized?” she asked, for the twentieth time in a row.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, so close to him, the air actually seemed thin and Laurel wasn’t sure if she could get enough wind to speak, but she finally said, “To Laurel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you say Laura?” he asked, not looking up, from where he was writing something longer than his signature.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she cleared her throat loud enough to make the bookseller jump, “Laurel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki tilted his head slightly back and to the side, so he could look at her over the top of his glasses, “Pity.  Thank you for coming,” he added, handing her back the book, his face perfectly blank.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While Laurel shrugged into her coat and the rest of the books were being signed, the store manager made an announcement that after the store closed there would be a small reception with the author at the pub down the block for anyone who was interested.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the door she stopped and turned back, and for a second, despite the space and crowd between them Loki looked fully at her, a brow raised as if in question and then he turned to greet the next person in line.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the time of Covid…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had no intention of going to the pub, even though I recognised that look and that raised brow for a question and invitation in one.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Outside in the cold, which seemed to wake me up, as if I had been asleep and not known it, I opened the book and looked at the inscription.  </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“For Laurel, </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The way she listened was more eloquent than speech, </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Loki.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, I learned it was a quote from the movie</span>
  <em>
    <span> Laura</span>
  </em>
  <span>, spoken by a man who had tried to kill the woman he was talking about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I went to the pub.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was one of those places that half-assed their British isles theme.  Everything was dark wood, with tile floors, a fake tin ceiling, and “genuine” Irish twee, Scottish tat, and English nonsense that was probably all made in China.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At first I was the only one there, standing by the bar, still shivering a little since it was a big place, and mostly empty, so the heat was doing little good.  I ordered an Irish Coffee because it was the only thing they had that was hot and had booze in it and because, you know, authenticity.  I held it in both of my hands and told myself I wasn’t going to wait longer than it took me to drink it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was on my second one, still shivering, when the crowd from the bookstore came in, small and huddled around Laufeyson, who was a head taller than most of them.  Stopping at the door, he turned his head to me and then pivoted the rest of himself, his eyes always locked on mine while saying something over his shoulder to the store manager, and then outpaced his entourage.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even then, besotted and blind as I was, I knew there was something off about his body language.  It was rather obvious as he crossed the large, open space.  I didn’t care.  The very sound of his shoes clicking towards me was a thrill.  My body was no longer shivering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was trembling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You look like you’re freezing,” he said, stopping, legs slightly spread but still looking down at me, his face expressionless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve been warmer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They tell me there is a small fireplace in the back room, if you would like to join me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mr. Laufeys-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Loki, please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Loki.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We sat there for a long time, huddled by the crappy, gas fire, me drinking and he, I realized later, pretending to.  From time to time one or the other of the group from the reading would come over and he would be very pleasant and seem to take some interest in them, and yet they would be gone in a few minutes or less, as if he were somehow verbally leading them away while still sitting with me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What did we talk about?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bullshit.  Nothing but his line of bullshit.  Flattery.  A secret here and there about his writing.  There was only one thing he said to me all night that was wasn’t a line of garbage being fed to someone hungry for any kind of attention from him.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They kissed and kissed and she moaned his name over and over and he touched her under her sweater, under her skirt, everywhere that he could in such a cramped place while they were both still fully clothed.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He bit her. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Laurel’s shriek was caught in the long, hard hand that covered her mouth.  That had covered her mouth to help keep her quiet as he fucked her.  His long, hard cock deep in her from behind, perfect, rubbing against all of the places she wanted, his free hand between her legs, rubbing her clit as well, his voice in her ear, telling her things that she wanted to hear.  Hypnotic, steady, insinuating.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like he was rewriting her thoughts.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he bit her.  Hard enough to break the skin, to fill her with teeth the same way he had filled her with his cock.  Assured, well-practiced, and all of the way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bathroom was small and not dirty, but it was still a bathroom stall, the air stinking of pink hand soap and the nose burning scent of cheap, blue toilet cleaner.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he loosed her from his teeth.  A hot gush of her blood was caught in his mouth and he suckled for more, he held her up when her knees went soft from pleasure and the sharp, hard shock of what he was doing.  The world became muffled, as if she was snowed in somewhere high and isolated, with too thin air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even the hard knock on the door, and the sound of a voice telling him that he was going to miss his train if they didn’t leave right away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shit,” he said, pulling out and propping her on the toilet after rearranging her clothing.  She could feel her body flopping around like a big, clumsy doll.  </span>
  <span>“I usually try to restrain myself from eating whilst on tour.”  Then he shrugged a bit, more to himself than to her.  “Accidents happen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He started to lean down, to whisper to her again, something about not remembering, but the pounding grew more urgent.  He shook his head, “This I cannot rush.  A moment, let me tell the driver he must wait for me.  Just stay here like  a good girl until I return.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was dizzy, and sick, and scared.  She also wasn’t interested in being a good girl.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thankfully the pub had a backdoor.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the time of Covid…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is something about having an event in your life that is either supernatural, unnatural, or a psychotic break, that rewrites your brain as effectively as any vampire’s compulsion.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Actually, I suppose I was under a vampiric compulsion, just not the one he wanted to leave me with, to forget certain details - the sharp and bloody ones - of our encounter.  I was compelled to find out everything I could about Laufeyson.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Years passed and I could never let it go.  Not until I had proof, real proof, that he was what he was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And when I had what seemed like the proof, was that good enough?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course not.  I wanted more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, what I learned.  Names that he had discarded, legends that he had left behind, stories he had told in languages I made myself learn.  I read and surfed and stroked the long healed wound on my throat and hunted him.  I couldn’t stop myself, and I did try.  I lost my band, my masters, a few jobs, and more than one boyfriend to my obsessive need to chart his course through the centuries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is amazing what you can learn when you give up most of your personal life and all of your dreams.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I learned a lot about his kind, while I was at it.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Probably far more than he did, since a narcissist only really cares to know about himself, right?  I should know.  Let’s say it takes a narcissist to think that when I got sick, I finally thought I knew why he had happened to me.  And that I was willing to shed my entire past for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I knew where he was and about his living arrangements, and that he had a rental property.  I knew that no one was living in it.  Laufeyson would be truly horrified to know just how much I knew about him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But not nearly as horrified as I was that he didn’t recognise me.  I lived in that apartment and got sicker and lonelier and even when he drank my blood again, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>still</span>
  </em>
  <span> didn’t remember me.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I suppose I can’t expect a thousand-year-old to remember every silly girl he’s fucked over in a bathroom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just like he couldn’t be expected to know that my taking in his ejaculate - you can’t really call it sperm when his swimmers have been dead for centuries - would</span>
  <em>
    <span> probably</span>
  </em>
  <span> work just as well as drinking his blood for the fluid exchange needed to turn someone who was already close to dying, </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> on whom he had been feeding on for weeks.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like I said, I know a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot </span>
  </em>
  <span>about vampires.</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. All you do is eat. You eat, then you start thinking about the next thing you're going to eat. - Rainbow Rowell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Loki sees to Laurel's nutrition.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel slept after eating.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I found myself still thinking in terms of human things with her, sleep instead of dormancy, eating rather than feeding, as if in some way I consider her to still be alive, to remain human, despite all evidence to the contrary.  My ravaged neck, as well as my being drained to the point of aching testicles and the silence that her breath and heartbeats no longer filled did not change the verbiage that I used for her in my mind.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Looking at her mouth covered in my dried blood I still could not see a monster.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I knew that I would pay for it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps, I thought as I drained the last of the bagged blood I had purchased, I already had in some way.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Close as it was to dawn, even it’s nourishment did nothing to revive me.  I opened the curtains so I could watch my freshly greening garden dim to my eyes as the sun that was rising behind my house made it grow lighter.  I have never had an explanation that has satisfied me for why my kind can endure the brightest fires or most garishly incandescent electrical lights, whilst even a ray of the sun diffused and reflected, weakened past the point of giving one of us much more than a bad burn can strike us blind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sometimes for days, sometimes forever.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now and then, for the last hundred years or so, I would court the destruction that permanent blindness would bring - the world has no mercy for a vitiated predator - by looking at the sun’s image reflected in a veiled glass.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Boredom is a luxury, and like all luxuries contains the potential to destroy those who overindulge.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yanking the curtain closed, I returned to my bed, carried Laurel’s dead weight back to the sofa, covering her for no reason, for she could grow no colder now, and then likewise buried myself beneath my duvet.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The smell of my own, crusted blood permeated the sheets.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Perhaps you want to know what blood tastes like to a vampire?  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prior to becoming one, during my extensive research, every description I read was similar to most pornographic fiction - disgusting and technical, or so poetic you couldn’t figure out what they were talking about.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And physically impossible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What blood tastes like, or at least what Laufeyson’s blood tasted like since it was all I knew then, was blood.  Copper, salt, as well as warmth since it had so recently come from the body of a living man.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blood tasted better than anything I could ever remember eating, since the memory of everything I had ever eaten was disgusting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fried chicken that I might have wanted badly a few days before would have tasted the same to me as it had before I died, except I no longer could stand even the idea of it.  The texture, the chewing, was the grossest possible idea, let alone the … chickeniness, for lack of a better description.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>My body, sick for so long, tired for so long, was hungry and energetic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I sat up, knowing despite the heavy curtains and the entire attic above me that the sun was gone.  Laufeyson was sitting on the edge of his bed across the room, his hair undone and hiding the face I could see he had buried in his hands.  “What’s wrong with you?  Other than me?” I asked, getting up and heading to the bathroom. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was covered in his blood.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His broad, pale shoulders began to shake.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was laughing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was considering how to keep us both fed.  Fortunately your government … no, the mortal government is easing its restrictions at last.”  Then he mumbled, “You have the devil’s good fortune,” followed by something that sounded like ‘author.’</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I waited for Laufeyson to decide to teach me to hunt and seemed not to notice I was in no hurry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The world needs to unfurl a bit first.  Be content,” he added, when the doorbell rang. The wreck of a handsome man in expensive but shabby country club wear waited on the porch and leered at me while they did business.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your pet is looking better.  Her coat is so shiny…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The collar of his shirt gaped open.  His pulse was obscene as was the swelling of his veins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stood in the doorway and Laufeyson moved to block his view, “Naughty, dog.  Laurel is not a pet, as you know, or you would not be longing to stick your nose between her legs and then for her to beat you for the insolence,” he said in a bored voice as he rifled through the contents of a small cooler bag.  “This will do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He offered the man a roll of bills.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rather than take it, he looked at me over Laufeyson’s shoulder, his red-shot blue eyes wide with lust.  I could smell the drool pooling in his mouth, and something savory, which I later learned were androgens.  Even though his blood was living and hot in him there was a rancidness to it that I could almost feel.  Like it had been tainted with motor oil.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe she would rather have something fresher?  I would be happy to -”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson smelled better.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had eaten garbage before, though.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was starving.  Hunger and weakness made my legs shake, just a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My fangs pierced my lower lip, making me groan, knowing how it would affect the man and it, plus the sight of the tiny drop made him moan and as he blatantly squeezed himself through his pants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There is nothing fresh about you.” Laufeyson put the roll in the other man’s jacket pocket and then grabbed his chin between a thumb and the side of his finger, hard enough to hurt and to force him to meet his eyes.  Without a change of voice or his turning, I knew that he was talking to me when he added, “Stop.  Now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ignored whatever lie I was about to offer, pushing the delivery man backward, so he almost stumbled off of the porch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go.  Or the pain you get will not be to your liking,” he said, then added, “and return with the same next week,” closing the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson shoo’d me into the living room and poured me two fingers of blood from a plastic pouch into the same glass he had offered me whiskey in the night I had come to tell him I couldn’t pay my rent.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Holding it by the top, hand like a pallid spider, he pushed it at me when I wouldn’t take it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s this or go hungry.  Refuse it tonight and I will not offer you any until you have learned to value regular feeding.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I could have fed on-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking down at me, as he had that night, his eyeglasses reflected a bit of light from an amber shaded lamp.  “No.  Robert is … unfit for consumption.  He is befouled in any number of ways and as my child, you will not sully yourself with his corrupt blood.  Now drink.”  Though his tone was impassive I could see a tightness in his knuckles, in the lines of his thighs under the black denim of his pants, and around his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wanted him, isn’t that the whole point of this?  To have what we want?  And I’m not your child.  That’s disgusting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The asshole had the gall to look offended.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I don’t like being ordered around.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can feed on you again.  I think we both liked that.  Dad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson does not like being defied.  At least he didn’t that night.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a snarl, and then he moved with a speed and sureness that even now I cannot match.  Years of predation meant I was in moments seated on his leg, legs akimbo, holding and clawing at his arms as one of them held my head back, forcing my mouth open, and the other slowly, slowly drizzled the blood into it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Appetite turns us into traitors to ourselves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That first cool, thick drop rolling across my tongue, down my dry and aching throat, turned me thrall to it, made the hand that now stroked my neck wonderful, made the praise and threats he whispered, and the blood and the feel of him feeding me - even if it was in this one-off way - all I wanted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I even licked the glass clean.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t taste as good as he had.  Not even close.  It was chilly and lacking in savor, but hunger - and I had a lot of hunger - really was the best sauce.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can do this every night if need be,” he said.  “I will not have you sickening.”  He placed me on the couch, walking to the wet bar where he had left his own glass, which he smiled into as he drank, “Not when we have just made you well again.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I didn’t make a big deal of it after that.  The bored amusement in his voice made certain of that.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>We would sit in the dining room, and he would watch me drink, barely sipping himself, and then would pour what was left from his own glass into mine, staring at me with a warning look in his icy green eyes until I finished that as well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I moved into the guest room, which was nowhere near the lavish den that he slept in but was far nicer than any place I had lived before.  Though I would rise each night with energy it burned itself out quickly, and for a week or so after ‘breakfast’ I would find myself napping on and off for the day.  I was even too tired to go and get any of my stuff from my apartment, and Laufeyson had told Zofia to be sure to be gone well before sunset, forgetting to ask her to bring my things over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As if he was afraid I would </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> something to her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Honestly, I didn’t trust that he was wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luckily he had a very big library, and let me wear some of his older clothes. With the rolled-up pants and the too-long sleeve of his elegant trousers and shirts I probably looked like a very clean, 19th-century street urchin.  All I needed was the newsie’s cap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Other than meals, we avoided each other easily since I was mostly bound to bed or the couch, and he was in his office, writing away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was fairly excited by that.  The idea of a new book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I would die before I would admit it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We never talked about the night I fed on him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Actually, during that time we barely spoke at all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The next time the doctor came Laufeyson met him on the lawn.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After a while he would go out at night, usually while I was asleep, or he thought I was, and I explored his house, always certain to be back in bed or reading before he came back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bursts of speed I could now manage regularly came in handy more than once those days.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Weeks passed.  I was … inspired by my new role as guardian.  Laurel was correct that considering her my child was repugnant, other than the one time I could not even form the word in my head.  Yet my responsibility she was.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps it was because she had been so close to death before her turning, or because of the strangeness of how it happened, that led to her taking so long to show the resilience and unnatural energies that are one of the hallmarks of our kind.  Who can say?  I would check as she fell dormant during the night, touching her to be sure that she put off the low thrum of dynamism that we had in place of life.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I needed to teach her to hunt, to feed, but until I knew she would not keel over with exhaustion I delayed.  To let her thrive.  Yet I put it off, again and again, no more certain about why than I was ready to do it.  Perhaps it was her innocence I was sparing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps it was that once she could feed on her own…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When she rested I went out and fed myself.  It was easy.  People were very stupid and needy for the presence of strange flesh in those days, and whose flesh could be stranger than mine?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I knew it would not last.  I could smell the plague on enough of them to know.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then, after a few weeks, when summer was high and hot, I read the news - there was an election that year, I recall - I noticed that the light from the chandelier did not gleam on her hair.  It was starting to look coarse.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Like the mane of a beast.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I threw the paper to the side.  “Don’t drink that.  Get dressed.  We are going out.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She put down the glass, frowning, “Why?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“We’re hunting.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I had no idea I had gone this long between chapters.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. The least appealing part of the day, though, was definitely lunch. ― Massimo Carlotto</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>They go out.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>I can’t tell you how weird it felt to be out in the world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I suppose if you were alive then, alive and an adult which would make you quite old indeed, you probably remember those first days when the US believed itself to be safe enough to open the doors and let a little air inside.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a book about that time, the title was a quote from the end of Dante’s Inferno when Virgil leads Dante out of hell.  “And we came outside and saw the stars again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson led me outside, and that was what it was.  I saw the stars again and I realized that it had been since long before Covid that I had seen them.  I had stopped looking.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though the world was cracked the littlest bit open, the sky was darker, and the air quieter, than it would normally be.  There was a velvety feel to the damp air.  I had learned that my body being still inside somehow made me more sensitive to what was happening outside of it.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not able to help it, I shuddered a little at its touch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not in revulsion, though it was unsettling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For whatever reason, Loki continually side-eyed me as we walked out into the garden, to go to his car.  As if he was afraid I were a skittish doe that would bolt away, breaking a leg so he would be further inconvenienced, or was just going to collapse in a heap and crush his newly blossoming azaleas.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe he was waiting to see if I rebelled again.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had been less than happy with the outfit he had picked for me to wear for our grocery run.  Partly because it was shiny, but mostly because it came from the standing closet where he kept the items of clothing left behind by his various one-night snacks.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So this woman left without her entire dress?” I asked, holding the thing at arm’s length.  It wasn’t that it was ugly or cheap.  Made of fine, silvery mesh slip dress with a silk lining, and had obviously cost someone more than a reasonable person would spend on something that they were planning on having ripped off of them anyway.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shrugged, “It was growing early and I wanted her to leave, and I believe she had some manner of a jacket.  By the time Zofia found it I had lost her number.  Do not fear, the likelihood we shall run into her is rather slim.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not really what I was worried about.  I don’t want to wear it,” I thrust it back at him.  “It’s not … I don’t dress like that.  Like someone who has a stylist instead of a personality.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thrust it back, “And I have no doubt that you have nothing suitable for where we are going.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where is that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No place you would have heard of.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was probably true.  I hadn’t gone out much since moving to town, and then the world got sick, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant.  “Go fuck yourself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rather than answering me, or getting angry, Laufeyson draped the dress over a chair, “I am going to see if you have any shoes that won’t look ridiculous with it.  Do you have makeup?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When you are a vampire your stomach doesn’t growl when you are hungry, it aches.  Like it has been crumpled like an old piece of paper, like it is giving itself papercuts.  That won the argument for him, and nothing else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His car was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the out, with wooden panels and leather seats and all sorts of other, impressive looking things that I didn’t understand.  Laufeyson drove with the careless grace and speed of someone who had been driving since the first automobile was built.  And who didn’t fear death.  In other circumstances I might have been excited and exhilarated by it, but instead I felt-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raw.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Exposed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Naked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I looked over at him, in his suit, his hair out of its braid but obeying his will.  He was fine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been so long since I had been outside of his house and even longer since I had been outside of mine and now here I was riding through the whipping air, dressed in not much more than a net, with bare arms, my tits all but hanging out, without even a heartbeat to protect me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I grabbed the seat at either side of my thighs to keep from wrapping my arms around myself to hide.  The leather groaned in complaint as I squeezed harder and harder until my fingers popped through it in several places.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson heard it happen, and I heard the gritting of his teeth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We pulled up in front of a nondescript building with what at first looked like a boarded-up storefront.  Closer up, after we left the car in the parking lot of the abandoned mini-mall next to it, I could see the boards were oak, with a faint mural carved into it, and a door that was flush enough to be nearly invisible.  Only a key card reader glowing faintly next to it gave anything away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had a keycard, of course.  “What is this place?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Club Hush, it’s semi-private.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hate it already.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door opened and we walked into the belly of the haute bourgeoisie.  Dark, shining, thumping with bass overlaid with swooning, droning vocals, smelling like incense and high-end booze, too crowded and too convinced it was interesting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And I hated it more.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was miserable.  I wanted to go home.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She glowed in the silver of that idiot dress.  In the past there were those that would have thought she was a saint, to look so.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel hated The Hush, which came as no surprise.  The fact that she hated it, that she made no effort to hide it, that she was clearly frowning under her silk mask, while her eyes registered disdainful disgust as she walked through them scintillating on my arm, whilst exuding that undefinable quality of desirable otherness that humans sensed unknowingly in our kind, made her irresistible to a certain kind of club goer.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The kind we were seeking.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After buying a bottle and paying the steep price for it and the table near the dance floor that even members did, I asked Laurel to dance.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The look in her eyes made me laugh.  “What?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You dance?  Like, this kind of dancing?” she said, gesturing to the writhing bodies on the floor.  All too close together, many of them no doubt making the others sick, all assured that the magical wall of caste and money that protected them from reality would protect them from SARS-CoV-2 as well.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yes, and quite well.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No, I don’t want to dance.”  Showing a little bit of nerves, she pointed at the bottle, “Can I drink that?  Will it make me-”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“It won’t make you sick, or drunk.  You will probably be appalled by the taste.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m already appalled by the price, and this music. Pour me one.”  I did, and when she fiddled with the glass I realized she was nervous, very nervous, and simply wanted something to do with her hands.  “Can we get this over with?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“We need to dance.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The crowd was close enough that Laurel’s nerves and lack of grace were camouflaged by the bodies of others and what seemed to be hauteur on her part but was more truly her skin crawling.  I resented that I could enjoy neither showing her how to dance, or even how to select a victim, because of my overriding and strange need to get her out of there as quickly as could be managed whilst still getting us fed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Finally, after we wandered through dancers in expensive and minimal fabric trying to hide their joy at what they thought was the return of the world they had known behind jaded worldliness, disentangling myself from groping hands when need be, I narrowed the field to two.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One of each, since I was not sure what would be more to Laurel’s taste.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They were beautiful, with perfect skin and lovingly tended hair, smelling of expensive lotions and oils and beneath, of healthy, youthful, warm animals.  At least I assume they did, I cannot really remember what any of them look like much after the next night.  A sign of my advancing years, no doubt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I don’t want him.  Or her,” she said, sounding at once petulant and put out.  Or perhaps that was only how I heard her tone.  Laurel was not petulant by nature, but rather was decided and possessed of a stubbornness that rivaled that of queens I have knelt before. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And that have knelt before me, in their turn.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Which perhaps made her even more adamantine, for kneeling was one pose I could not picture her in, no matter how pretty I would imagine she’d look thus, looking up at me, her delicate fangs pressing over her sweet, wet mouth.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At the moment, however, I was more clearly picturing her pressing those fangs into the throat of one of the choices before her - little matter which it should be - and forcing her to drink.  To fill herself.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Thankfully it was loud enough and both of our hearing that of predators, so we could speak privately even whilst at the same table.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Grabbing her by the upper arm, I pulled her close, her chair spinning slightly, so the silk of my mask stroked her ear, “I will not let you starve yourself from spite.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I don’t fuck strangers,” she hissed back.  “Ever.  I learned that lesson the hard way.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The two humans I had picked both postured a bit.  Her back bowed to show off her breasts, he brooded sullenly, showing off his full-lipped pout, both ready to go home with us and engage in any manner of erotic perversion we might want.  Indeed, they saw in us everything they had been denied for weeks.  Everything they felt their beauty and position of privilege and youth earned them.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was reminded of Bocaccio, of the plague days of the past when the rich and powerful would gather within their walls, larders filled, wine flowing, and wait for enough of the poor to die that the disease would die of exposure because it lacked the bodies of the living to dwell within.  Those gorgeous creatures had looked at me the same way.  Some terrified they would die anyway, others too stupid to know that one end or another would take them.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That all human life was the same to death.  And me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I killed in those days.  For life was cheap and everyone died young, and I had not learned control.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I looked at Laurel. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You don’t have to fuck them, if you should not want to.”  I refused to smile, but I shall not lie, it pleased me that she wouldn’t.  I certainly was not planning on it, either.  “You have to eat.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No,” she reached into my jacket pocket for my keys.  I could have stopped her, but it would have shown too much preternatural speed to do so.  “I’ll be waiting in the car.  You pick, bring whoever back with us, but I’m not having any.  The smell of both of them turns my stomach.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She was lying and telling the truth at the same time.  Her stomach was turning from pain.  The young starve easily, as one grows older the pain of needing blood lessens, or perhaps becomes a tolerated acquaintance.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The crowd parted for her unwittingly, both to shrink back from her and so they could watch hungrily as she passed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Uh, so are we going to do this?” the boy said.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I picked the girl, and I knew what I was going to do.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because someone else was with us, was with </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I didn’t run when we got out of the car.  Instead, with as much dignity as a woman wearing the most ineffectual chainmail could have, I all but ran to the house, much as I wanted to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They followed me, her kissing his impassive face and hanging on his arm, drunk on Laufeyson as much as the $900 bottle of champagne she’d finished in the car.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had tried to make conversation as we drove along the lake, about the weeks of the shelter in place, about the car, thankfully not noticing that I wasn’t talking and that Laufeyson was doing little more than making considering grunts.  He looked at me through the rearview mirror, pushing his glasses up with one finger, an enigmatic look on his face when she told me her name and asked mine, and I didn’t respond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Her name is Lorelie,” he lied for me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pretty.  My name is sooo boring.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So boring I forgot it as soon as I heard it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inside the door, I kicked off the pink sandals I hadn’t worn in over a year, unhappy to learn that vampirism does not keep one from sore feet, “I’ll see you in the … evening,” over my shoulder as I climbed the stairs.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I could feel his glare cutting into my back, and her asking, “I thought she was going to at least watch?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After taking off the dress and tossing it out of the window, I lay down under all of the blankets I could put on the guest room bed, curling up and trying not to shiver, trying to rest, hoping that would help with the hunger.  Though I used to go out a lot, though I used to be in a fucking band, the terrible music was still chiming in my ears.  The susurrus of it, like wind making dried leaves and branched rub together, or maybe that same wind on sand.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Could I sing without being able to breathe?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t rest because it was still dark outside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t rest because razor wire and bile were fighting in the ruins of my stomach.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t rest because she was making so much noise down there.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t rest because I could feel her in the house.  A strange presence like I had stepped on a piece of glass which had then turned and got lost in my flesh.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t rest because I was waiting for the sound of them climbing the stairs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t rest because I could smell her blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unable to stand any of it, I took a shower, using the heat, and the sound of the blasting water, and the scents from Laufeyson’s collection of soaps and hair care products to block the sensory assault that was that woman being in our house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the hot water ran out, and my stomach hurt so badly I could barely stand I turned off the taps.  It was nearly dawn, and the house was silent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Turning around, Laufeyson was standing so close to me my breasts brushed him.  With a startled squeak I jumped back, hitting the wall.  He was soaked through his expensive suit, water beaded on his glasses, and dripped from the ends of his hair.  Expressionless, he yanked back the sleeve of his jacket and the shirt beneath, causing several buttons to pop off, raised his wrist and bit into his own skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It sounded like someone taking a bite from a pear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He let his arm fall to his side.  “Go ahead,” his voice was emotionless.  I tried to lift his hand, but he used little effort to keep it immobile.  Weak and hungry, I couldn’t do a thing about it so I knelt in the bloody water and drank.  The salty gush was still hot from the body of the girl who’s name I couldn’t remember.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At one point I think he stroked my hair, but I couldn’t be sure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After, he pulled down his cuff, “Dry all the way off before coming to bed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I stood, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, feeling comfortable and relaxed for the first time all day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You mean go to bed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean come to bed,” he responded, before turning on his heel, whipping a towel off of the heated rack, drying his hair as he walked away.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. You are what what you eat eats - Michael Pollan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Laurel considers and Loki speaks.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>When I came out of the master bathroom, prepared to walk past Laufeyson and the girl, I was surprised to find him alone.  His soaked suit lay in a several thousand dollar ball in one corner, and he was naked but for the towel he had wrapped around his lean hips.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wound on his wrist was closed already.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hated that I would never mark him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where is she?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“After I fed, I sent her on her way,” he sounded weary for perhaps the first time since I had met him.  “Please,” he gestured to the bed, pulling back the thick, velvet blankets and linen.  A faint smell of linden leaves and his inky, coppery scent came from it.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought you only ate in bed?” I snapped at him, pulling my robe - his robe, since all of my things were still in my apartment - closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sighing, exhausted, he shook his head.  “Can we perhaps continue this when the sun is not so close at hand?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine.  Good morning,” I nodded and left, going back to the guest room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next evening I could hear Laufeyson banging around in his room.  Dress drawers.  The closet.  His desk.  He was himself perfectly silent.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a while, there was the pounding of the side of a fist on the guest room door.  “Meet me in the library.  We need to talk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When I heard him go downstairs I counted to twenty and then went down the servant’s staircase and went out through the kitchen back to my apartment.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rather than having that musty, too personal smell of someone’s home that had been closed off for too long so their things were trapped with their own odor everything was fresh and much cleaner than I had left it.  Even the fridge had been emptied out, and what food had been in the cabinets.  Zofia had clearly been there and I hoped she had been paid extra for it, since I had not been in any shape to clean for some time before I had been moved to the house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Opening my laptop I saw dozens of emails from the few people I had kept in contact with, trailing down to a trickle.  Only Marissa and one of my cousins in Ireland still stubbornly kept trying to reach me, both sounding angrier with every message but never stopping.  Yet.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>You probably think I’m an idiot - I know I do - that in all of my plans and considerations I hadn’t thought about what I was leaving behind.  Only that I wanted to live.  How did one gently put off the friends who you didn’t want to hurt but couldn’t and wouldn’t explain yourself to?  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The idea of asking Laufeyson how was laughable.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I turned off the laptop and put it in its case, thinking I might never open it again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking around at my things, where they sat against the backdrop of the furniture that came with the apartment, I found myself feeling no attachment to almost any of it.  As if when I died those connections had died with them- the love I had for the orange Fiestaware bowl I bought when my band played a show in West Virginia, the memories associated with the dress I had worn to my aunt’s funeral, even the way I had loved the scent of the floral and spice perfume I had worn for years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only my books, the records I had saved from the collection I had sold before moving and, amusingly, two pairs of shoes seemed to have any resonance with me, though I was relieved to put on clothing that wasn’t either</span>
  <em>
    <span> his</span>
  </em>
  <span> or something left behind by one of his one bite stands.  Sliding on a pair of black pants and an old blouse, and my running shoes, I had only just finished brushing my teeth with the toothpaste I found I still preferred to the more expensive brand Laufeyson had when he let himself in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stood in the doorway of the bathroom and watched me rinse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spitting, I stared at him until he moved to the side, and went back to the living room.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now that you are feeling better I understand your desire to bring some of your belongings to the house, but I said we needed to talk.  I will help you pack, while we do so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He actually sounded like he was being gracious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not going back.  I’ll stay here until the end of the month and then I’ll figure something out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The snort he gave was the only inelegant act he had ever committed in front of me.  “You will not.  You are my responsibility.  You cannot even feed yourself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Actually,” I sat down and pulled out my phone, which I waved around, getting madder by the moment, “while I was rattling around your house and you were ignoring me I found that creepy doctor’s number.  I bet if </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>make </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> kneel he’ll give me anything I want.  And don’t you dare look at me like that.  Last night was one humiliation too many in this life.  Death.  Whatever you call this.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I gestured to the two of us and felt myself snarl up at him.  I had never snarled before, yet now it seemed to come naturally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laufeyson seemed confused.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wished I hated him.  I wished I hated that beautiful face, that alien mind, that graceful series of gestures and words that made him up.  I wished that when I looked at him I saw a means to an end, an enemy who didn’t know I was his enemy.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I didn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I never had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the anger was real.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel’s fury was a surprise.  The heat of it.  Perhaps I have grown too used to my own, colder rages, that kind of fire having long since gone to ash and wind within me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You may have enjoyed humiliating me once, </span>
  </em>
  <span>making </span>
  <em>
    <span>me kneel like that, but don’t ever think you can do it again!  I have never, never felt so belittled, so small, felt so much contempt even from you!  You proved your point, no matter what I will always be beneath you!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For a few moments, I will admit, I was confounded.  And as if the heat of her rage had found a few, somehow still existent crumbs of fuel within me, as I started to reason out what she meant.  “Humiliate?  Enjoy?  Are you talking about what occurred in the shower?  Do you somehow think my pleasure was the reason for that?”  I found myself on my feet and pacing before her, pushing my hair back, my voice growing louder.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She did not answer, staring with narrowed eyes at nothing, her mouth small and tense.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Did you?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I shouted, volume learned on the battlefield and unused in a century shaking the windows and making her heed me, and though her eyes had grown wide they would not meet mine.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now I knelt before her, taking her arms in my shaking hands, trying not to shake her in kind, trying to find any of the cold that had served me like a loyal hound for so long.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was gone.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That anger, a thing discarded in the distant past infecting me, was…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I felt…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Calming my voice I held her still but not roughly, mastering myself for the moment, though as I spoke that learned calm sloughed away like a viper’s skin.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Laurel, I did not make you kneel to me.  I made you kneel to our hunger.  To our god.  We are gifted with an unlife beyond what the human mind can understand, keen senses, cool understanding, great strength and speed and the time to do what we will, be it to indulge our bodies, expand our skills, take in knowledge, see magnificent wonders, watch our enemies fall, anything.  But to have all of this we serve the scourging master that is our hunger.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now she looked at me, her brown eyes vast and wary.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I spoke faster, as if the anger in me was a goad, “A vampire who does not feed is a … we wither, we go mad, we suffer.  We suffer more than you did at the worst moments of your illness, and yet we do not die.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then I spoke of something I had not even allowed myself to think of in generations.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Once one of our kind had been punished by a former lover.  He buried m-,” I stopped myself and started again, “him for a thousand days.  When he was dug up he had… he had devoured part of himself in his need, and had then sickened on his own flesh.  To say he was a beast is ridiculous.  There was nothing so sane or calm as one would see in a rabid wolf left to him.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“That’s -”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I over spoke her.  “He tried to walk into the sun to escape the pain, and it can take far less time than that to turn one of us into a thing.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It had taken so much blood to heal me.  The ravaged muscles, the burns.  Like Mistress Bathory I had bathed in it to be restored, though unlike her I took no pleasure doing so.  Would you enjoy swimming in a vat of chops and onions?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You had gone weeks without blood before our deal, hadn’t you?”  Laurel’s voice brought me back from that memory.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I am very, very old, and with that comes resistance.  You are an infant.  Fragile, yet.  I know I hurt your pride, I am sorry for it.  Your pride is rather beautiful to me.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel fell silent and very still. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then said, nodding, talking as much to herself as to me, “I can keep drinking the blood from that doctor. Not, not getting it like I said I would, even though I know it’s probably expensive.  I don’t have any money.  Ok, I might have some more stuff to sell.  Or I could-”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“There are dangers there that even your clever mind has not considered, distracted as you are by needing to eat.  Those who deal in blood are like those who deal in any other contraband, rarely to be trusted, holding a power over you that should not be in the hands of someone who does not care for your wellbeing.  And even if they can be trusted - and our good doctor Robert </span>
  </em>
  <span>cannot</span>
  <em>
    <span> - their sources or their nerve can fail and leave you starving.  Unable to care for yourself.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sorrow, another thing I thought had atrophied and then blow away like dust within me, welled up at the idea that she thought I would allow her to do without.  Slumping forward, I pressed my forehead to her knees, sighing, “Laurel, you will never be hungry as long as I have teeth.  Even if you insist on drinking the cold, vile blood of strangers.  Providing for you is my privilege.  My pleasure.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I felt her touch my hair.  Stroking it, like I was her pet, her toy, as if I were hers in some way, any way at all.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, how long had it been since my heart had beat, why should it hurt now.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I was horror-struck.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe he thought I hadn’t heard his slip.  And he had no way of knowing that I had read a book he had written in the 18th century, a magnificent, disturbing gothic novel, where the heroine was locked in a crypt and left to starve.  When the hero had finally pried open the metal doors he had found her dead, at first thinking that she had been gnawed on by rats and then realizing it was much, much more horrible than that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a peaceful smile on her face, as if she were relieved to be dead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He buried his face in my lap, and I don’t think he knew that a shudder went through his shoulders, that he clutched my calves hard enough to bruise were I alive, “But the day may come when I cannot be there for you.  That I would leave unable to fend for yourself is intolerable.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even muffled, his resonant voice rumbled through me.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t speak.  The thought of this elegant, chilly, gifted monster being reduced to such a terrible state was more than I could imagine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>More than I could bear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Loki….” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I don’t even think I whispered it.  I think my lips shaped his name and nothing more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sitting back on his heels, he looked at me, head cocked, his jade-green eyes narrow not with anger but with a kind of curiosity.  Then the corner of his mouth lifted, “Again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I felt my lips mimic his, “Loki….”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he smiled, the fullest, most ridiculous smile I had ever seen on his face.  Open-mouthed, looking down at a bit as if shy, then raising his eyes to mine over the tops of those fake glasses, and smiling even harder.  He had never been so expressive before.  It was an astonishment to know he was capable of so much revelation, and though a small, annoying part of me wondered if it was a manipulation or a lie, I didn’t care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Radiance can overwhelm even the most logical thoughts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Loki,” I said it again, and it tasted as good in my mouth as his blood did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The smile slowly retreated, and now he looked serious.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was never able to stop studying him, even then. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He kissed me. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With everything we had done, he had never kissed me.  Or perhaps he had, but it was only as a part of something else, as an adjunct to fucking me, a little teasing refinement rather than an actual kiss.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though I had kissed him once, and then more to shock him, and because I wanted to kiss someone one more time before I possibly died this was different. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He kissed me like it mattered, like I mattered, like we mattered together.  He kissed me very tenderly, at first even tentatively, not taking but offering, laying himself before me so I could be the one to take him, if I would.  Then, when I opened to him, when I kissed back, there was a slow and lavish hunger to it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, it was not a kiss I could ever have been prepared for, as girlish and silly as that may sound.  Even now, I can’t imagine being prepared.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He kissed me like we were alive.  </span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out?  - Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A continuation of the last chapter</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>I am very old, one of the oldest of my kind left.  Only two who are older are personally known to me, and I am aware of a scant handful more whose existence I can be reasonably certain of.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Apart from a brief interlude of a few weeks or months now and then, and a disastrous, near fatal, affair of some years with a different order of monster who had set himself as a petty despot during the Thirty Years War, I had been alone.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We had great fun, Frederic and I, playing monsters together, bringing out the worst in each other.  But I did not love him and he did not like that he could not make me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though he was able to make me do many, many other things…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It ended badly.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have only loved once.  My wife, min kona.  She had been a raid-taken slave, defiant, brave, and so very irksome, belonging to my mother, forever being beaten for refusing to work, being shackled for running, being locked in the dark for learning our language for the joy of cursing us more meaningfully.  From the moment I first saw her pour a handful of salt into a guest’s mead cup before serving him and then laughing at the blow that he struck her, I knew that the gods had put her in my way.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When my mother threatened to sell her, a sack full of Arabian coins and my three finest ponies bought her.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I took the shackles from her ankles she frowned, “What are you doing?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“When the winter is over I will see you home.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her eyes were the golden brown polished alder and gleamed with malice and mistrust.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Why?”  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I could not tell her, for she would never have believed me.  Rather, I spent the winter showing her the why of it, first by leaving her be, save to see her fed and warm in my lodge, then by words, then by touch.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The dawn that I awoke after the first night she agreed to spend fully in my bed I saw her standing in the open doorway, looking at the sun rising over the finally melting fields.  For a moment my heart raced, and I was sure she was planning to bolt like a wild horse.  Rather, she sighed, “And now I will have to stay in this ugly, cold place…”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But she smiled slyly and her eyes were bright.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Come back to bed,” I whispered, lifting the furs, “I will be certain you are always warm.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She came to me, and the weight of her against my chest was joy.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She was the first who I devoured upon my turning.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I am glad that I do not remember the taste of her blood.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even if you are a couple of preternatural creatures of the night it can be tricky as hell to know exactly what to do after sharing what would be a soul-stirring kiss if you still had a soul to be stirred.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki took a step back from me, his face returning to its chill neutrality, waiting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I thought of any number of snappy, clever things to say.  Famous wit that I am, I settled for mumbling, “What?” while crossing my arms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am trying to figure out the most elegant way for us to return to the house.  This place is far too grim for what I have in mind.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no disagreeing with that.  The time I had spent there sick seemed to have tainted what was already a pretty sketchy apartment.  A hazy dirty smell and a nicotine yellow discoloration touched everything, or maybe it had all been there before but my senses were too distracted by life to be aware of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What did you have in mind?” I asked, rather than reminding him that he owned the building and had charged me rent for it until very recently.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pushed his glass up with one finger to the bridge, as if he needed them.  “Young as you are, that is still a highly naive question.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel has brown eyes.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elegantly or not, mostly not because we stopped and started again, we went back to the house.  Not elegantly, but gracefully because Loki -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had been Laufeyson for so long, even when thinking about him, so I could keep him away from what I hid from him.  That name was a lock in my mind that was barely able to hold closed the feelings and fears and wants that I had that I could not afford for him to see.  As strong as his will and mind were it had held him out.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now I found myself breaking it off, on the verge of throwing myself open and saying, “Look at this.  See everything that’s here.  Take anything you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was so-</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It </span>
  </em>
  <span>was so easy to call him Loki, and he smiled at me every time I did. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Walking down the stairs from my apartment was relatively simple, he went first while I turned off the lights and locked the door, so he was waiting for me at their foot.  Stopping me, so I was on a step and we were almost the same height, he pushed a bit of my hair behind my ear, “You’re getting shaggy.   Would you like me to cut it for you?  I’m quite proficient.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That touch, that bare contact of his finger to my ear, made my body go soft, like it was warm, if warmth were possible.  “Our hair grows?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course.  As do our nails.  But slowly.  Everything about us is faster or slower than the living.”  Leaning close, he whispered in my ear, “Sometimes so slow it’s maddening.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As maddening as you?” I tried to joke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing is as maddening as I am.”  Then he took me by the hip and kissed me again.  Far from gently, but smiling against my lips as I wrapped my arms about his neck and let myself touch his hair, falling into him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was when things got less graceful, and far, far less elegant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of the way through the garden, stumbling over Loki’s precious flowerbeds - he didn’t seem to notice, stopped on a bench so he could take me onto his lap to playfully nip my neck, taking one bite hard enough to make me jump with pleasure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I cannot recall how long it has been since I have dallied with a pretty creature in a moonlit garden,” he nuzzled the bite and languorously stroked the skin under my shirt.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I offered him more of my throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s kind of overcast, actually.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughed then.  The most ridiculous, ratcheting, almost embarrassed laugh you have ever heard.  I almost fell off of him laughing at that laugh.  Then I realized I might be the only person currently in the world who had ever heard it, which made me turn and coil about him at the loneliness of that thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As selfish as I am, it wasn’t until that very moment I thought he must be the loneliest thing in the world.  Even lonelier than me.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now I kissed him, pressed to him, doing both things harder than I ever had before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not needing to breathe has so many advantages.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a strange, low humming noise that I didn’t recognise, though it made my chest ache nicely in the way drums at a parade used to when I was little.  Laughing, I broke away from his kiss, “I think I hear the stars.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean?” he asked, suddenly serious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I told him what I heard.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, that is the earth.  You will know it when you hear the stars.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was so serious, meeting my eyes, speaking solemnly, I had to kiss him again.  I was as stupid as any girl and didn’t care.  We fell farther and farther into each other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enough,” he pulled away finally, his beautiful voice guttural, and stood with me in his arms.  There was no more dallying. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Back in the house he set me down beside the bed and took a step back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Having been away and then back in that short time I was suddenly aware of how much noise there was in the house’s silence.  The wood constantly shifted and settled itself anew, the windows gave a soft, glassy </span>
  <em>
    <span>shiiinge</span>
  </em>
  <span> with each breeze, I would swear I could even hear the simmer of the hot water heater in the basement. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I could smell the flowers that used to be in the vase by the window, but that had been thrown out two days before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toeing off my shoes, my bare feet could feel the whorls of the lacquered wooden floors.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki watched me, intently.  “You are finally starting to wake up.  I think your... desire to thwart me may have kept you from it before now.  What you missed out on…” he shook his head slowly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I stepped to him, about him, raising on my toes so I could speak against his lips, “It was so fun, though.  But now show me the rest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We should start with the basics, then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was more graceful when removing my clothes than we had been getting that far, spidery fingers making quick work of buttons and zippers, pulling my panties down with the jeans, kissing and kissing all of the while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I could taste the cinnamon and tea tree oil from his toothpaste, I could taste the blood of the girl from the night before, I could taste the few sips he’d taken of a scotch at that terrible club.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And what I could feel.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Each fingertip brush on my skin, each tease from his now loose and wild hair, made sounds of pleasure judder from me.  By the time he was undressed as well I could barely make it to the bed.  I couldn’t stop shuddering after a time, as if I were freezing, but with desire.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I twined and rubbed against him, wanting some relief, his thigh between my legs, the small sprinkling of hair on his chest to scratch my nipples, anything would help, but nothing would do any good.  Hating myself for it, I even whined.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only a little.  I was swollen and wet to the point of pain.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a little frightening.  To be so out of control.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was little better.  When I took his cock in my hand it was thickly coated in cool pre-cum, “Stop now,” he tried to order me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I ignored him, working him through the slickness, watching his eyes roll back for a moment, overcome and undone and gorgeous.  Then he bit my shoulder, to make me still.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stretched me out on the bed and crouched over me, his accent thickening, as if he were having a harder and harder time excavating English, “Do not worry, </span>
  <em>
    <span>moj skarb</span>
  </em>
  <span>, </span>
  <em>
    <span>nie chvaliujsia</span>
  </em>
  <span>….” he crooned to me, licking the tears that were rolling from the corner of my eyes.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thrusting a hand between my legs, he smiled like a beast who had found his mate was in heat.  Twisting his fingers in and out of me, pinning me in place with a hand to my chest, he watched avidly as the first orgasm bowed my back, the pain of needing him only increased, and I shredded one of his expensive pillows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Where the claws came from I had no idea, but I could not wait to score and mark his back with them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I did not need to wait long.  Pushing my legs apart, Loki settled between them, teasing the thick, wet head of him in and out of me until I could no longer put up with it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He let me flip him over, he let me take him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I knew he loved it the first time, and he loved it now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Overcome and undone and gorgeous.  I slipped a hand between us so I could touch myself, while he sucked on his own fingers, tasting me as I soaked his cock, coming on it again.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I would like to tell you it was poetry, that as creatures of the night we made love like darkness and dreams.  That might come later, but now we fucked like people who were trying to tell each other desperate truths, and who needed to get a lot of fucking out of our systems before we could say any of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I scratched him, and he loved the clean pain of my new claws.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He bit me again and again, moving in me so I came every time he broke my flesh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We wore out each other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>We wore out the night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We wrapped ourselves - bloody, sticky, filthy - in the sheets and fell asleep, Loki spooning me, his cock still in me, his teeth in my shoulder, and mine in his forearm, the one that pillowed my head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel’s eyes are watchful, sharp, and gleaming.  Her gaze had a discernible weight to it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To paraphrase a writer that I rather admire, I hadn't felt the stress of such a regard as her’s in a very, very long while.  For years now she had pinned me in place and observed, knowing what she looked at, neither turning away nor fawning, but rather learning and hunting.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I could feel those eyes on me even when they stared at me through the distances the computerized world allowed, through the pages of a book.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now, finally, I would allow her to see everything.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Have I not told you?  I, too, am a liar.  I am such a good liar that for a time I can even convince myself of my untruths, which is how I can make other people believe them in turn, no matter how outrageous.  That black is white.  Up is down.  I am such a good liar I can even make myself believe that the woman who is renting the flat above my garage, who has haunted my thwarted desires for years, is someone I have never met before even as the memory of the taste of her blood makes my mouth water and my teeth ache.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I can persuade both of us that I do not want her.  That I find her distasteful.  For a time, at any rate.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yes, I am quite probably the greatest liar in all of history.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But I am sure you already knew that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat.  - E. Nesbit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Loki gets carry out.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The next night Loki went out early, having gotten up, showered, and dressed in one of his seemingly endless supply of beautiful suits - this one was deep plum, with a black silk tie - before I had even managed to roll over.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sat on the edge of the bed and frowned at me as I stretched and tried to get the energy to get up myself.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had a feeling seeing that expression first thing in the evening was going to be a large part of my future.  Or maybe not.  Maybe last night wasn’t the start of something, but only-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I didn’t want to think about it.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”  I tried my damnedest not to sound defense and I am sure I failed, but Loki didn’t seem to notice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We were too… vigorous last night, clearly,” he said, gently pulling down the blanket to look at my shoulder, where his fangs had spent the day.  There was a stinging pain from where the blood had dried to the velvet, and a deeper ache.  Shaking his head, he leaned down and kissed the spot so softly I barely felt it.  Considering how disgusting I smelled and probably looked, and how fastidious he was, I was touched and disturbed equally.  “There should barely be a mark, let alone a wound.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a tone of fear in his voice that set me on edge, “I mean-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cutting me off, he kissed me on the cheek, then on the mouth, his eyes closed.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, before I could recover, he stood up, straightening his jacket, and putting on his glasses, “When you can, when the bites have finished closing, consider taking a bath with some salts.  Even though our bodies are no longer human, it can still be soothing.  And I have a theory that the nutrients might be somewhat beneficial considering the level of sodium in our normal diet.  Then rest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where are you going?”  I sat up, wrapping a sheet around myself.  The air felt oily and chill.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you cold?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not exactly, sort of more like I am aware of the cold.  Right?”  For fucksake, was I still going to be sick even after I was dead?  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Malnutrition…” he mumbled to himself, crossing the room to leave.  “I will be back as soon as I am able.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though I started to ask where he was going, I didn’t, since I was pretty sure I knew and I was a hypocrite.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My kind, those of us who still exist, rarely kill any longer, and have not for sometime now.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Of course there are always outliers - Lara in Russia, the Ov brothers wherever they have ended up, Phillipe in Paris, and the like - who will not or cannot control themselves, usually because they are too lazy to learn new ways and too powerful and cunning to be stopped.  Or perhaps they simply like killing.  All of them are too annoying for me to bother finding out their alleged philosophies of monstrousness.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sadly, there are also the odd children left by negligent sires to learn for themselves.  Mostly they end up dying by their own foolishness, or if they run too wild one of us will step in to put the world out of their misery.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We did not stop feeding unto death because at some point in the Nineteenth Century we all were suddenly taken with a newfound respect for human lives.  There have always been vampires who have chosen not to kill, whose morality managed to remain intact - or eventually grew back - and fed accordingly.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For the rest of us, it was a growing understanding that they were many, we were few, and that eventually their science would even the playing field between us if we did not learn to curb our instincts, fade into folklore, and use more subtle weapons than fang and claw.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though there was not a one of us that wouldn’t be willing to make an exception if the situation warranted.  I have never met a vampire who wouldn’t choose to kill rather than starve, no matter how nice their morals might be.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There is always someone willing, wanting, </span>
  </em>
  <span>craving, </span>
  <em>
    <span>all but begging to be devoured.  When I say this please do not assume I mean the victims of this world, or rather the ones the world has victimised, placed in danger, or forced into situations outside of the safety of what is considered society.  Rather, I am referring to the monsters who prey upon the unfortunate, lost, hurt, and discarded. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I am talking about the predators.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe it is the ancient warrior in me.  The Norse jarl who braided his hair, took seax and spear in hand, and killed for glory, golden arm rings, and to take all that we could from those who were weaker than we were.  I was not above killing helpless peasants then, of course, if they had bags of grain or a secret stash of coin, but there was no pleasure to it.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Killing another killer though?  That was a joy of joys.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I am not to be mistaken for a virtuous creature, but there are always those who deserve to die a bad death.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I wore a suit that I was not concerned with.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Those fuckers are asking for it.  And always delicious.  Adrenaline is a sauce that flavors every dish equally well, but aggression and poisonous levels of testosterone are my favorite spices.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If you are an expensively dressed, staggering drunk, and let us say lanky rather than bulky, not to mention wearing glasses, wandering around after dark, and you wander long enough, eventually someone will try to rob you.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The world was in a bad way, and it was possible that the way things were that the person attempting to rob me might genuinely be in need of the money, for themselves or one they cared for.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Should you be very lucky, someone or a few someones will decide it will be great sport to harass, first shouting slurs - ‘hey faggot’ for instance - then maybe shoving you a bit, asking if you are looking for a cock to suck, and so on.  And finally, oh finally, shoving and rudeness turned to violence.  The sort of violence that the instigators will say, should the authorities become involved, “just sort of got out of hand.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Whilst they desperately long for it to do that very thing, and turn murderous. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There were three of them.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Had it been four the modest pang of self-reproach I felt would not have been felt.  Four might have had a chance.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No, it would have to be a least five, but with four at least one would have led me a chase.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Should I give you detail?  The motions made, first theirs, rough and to my eyes laughably slow and skill-less, and then mine?  Mine that were too swift for them to see, too experienced and brutal for them to stop, even if they should see them?  The smells - blood, urine, and hormone perfumed sweat, against the backdrop of garbage and damp in the alley - and the sounds?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Few sounds.  Hardly anyone was abroad, it being mid-week, it being Covid, it being late, yet attracting attention would cause fresh trouble I had no desire to deal with.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Would some minor details interest, then?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I covered the mouth of the first one to keep his voice from bothering me, and his blood was some degrees hotter than normal.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>His whiskers tickled my nose.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Another kicked his heels softly on the cement as I fed, sending a crushed, green plastic bottle scuttering into the deeper darkness, away from the little light coming from a garish beer sign.  He must have been terribly strong.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There is more, but I think you do not want to know more.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have a theory that as our kind age our superfluous organs - the liver, the kidneys, the heart - wither and shrink to give way for our ever expanding organ of appetite.  Sadly, the rapid decay or outright turning to dust of a vampire who has been destroyed means this is condemned to remain a theory.  I gorged myself with no reproach.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After all, I was eating for two now.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Did I kill them, or force on them a humiliating yet less supernatural memory that would teach them not to follow strangers into alleys, regardless of how temptingly helpless they might seem?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If I do kill them, what do I do with their remains?  I would have thought you would have understood by now, if you have enough money there will always be someone who can make your problems disappear.  So I could have done that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though that would have taken time, and not killing them would take me home sooner.  And I could not wait to get home.  I knew I would drive too fast as it was.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Please feel free to decide for yourself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I took the bath Loki recommended.  He didn’t have quite as many bath salts and scents and whatnots as he did hair care products.  Not quite.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Possibly because his tub was not quite as insanely fancy as his shower. It could only comfortably hold two people  Three if they got into each other’s space in a big knot beforehand and sort of jumped in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Picking something with a French name that turned the water a deep cobalt blue, and getting it hot enough to turn me into soup if I were still human, I winced as I lowered myself in, expecting all of the abraded and pierced parts of me to burn.  But they didn’t.  Even if I wasn’t all of the vampire I should be yet my skin was back to perfect.  Even the boiling hell-fire I was expecting between my legs from fucking Loki raw was next to nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And thankfully the muscles that weren’t bothered by cold could still enjoy heat if you made it hot enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After soaking until the water started to cool down I washed my hair and carefully conditioned, knowing that would be a big concern to him.  Even when we had been avoiding each other he would at least once a night find me to lift a lock of my hair and rub it between his fingers, frowning.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I refused to ask him why.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All the while I didn’t think about the night before.  I didn’t think about what it meant.  I didn’t think about how His Mercurial Majesty might, when he came back, be equally likely to tell me that I had to get out, or that he couldn’t bear to be parted from me, or that maybe we should just be friends, or that he had decided to move to Winnipeg and would I like to go as well?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, I wouldn’t like it.  But I knew I would go.  I would go to Winnipeg, to Tangiers, to Tristan de Acuna, to North Korea, the South of France, or Rockford, Il.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes, even Rockford, and if you have ever been there then you know how horribly in love with him I was.  Disgustingly, vilely, utterly in love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Moaning in shame at myself, I slid down beneath the sudsy water to hide from the feeling.  I had been fully prepared to be a monster, not to love one, and if I had had breath my own hypocrisy would have taken it away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because I </span>
  <em>
    <span>didn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> breathe I lay on the bottom of the tub for a long time, watching the ceiling through the water that was like a false sky, the foam eddying like clouds until I heard Loki’s car pull into the driveway.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time he was in the house I had dried off, wrapped my hair, and put on a robe to go sit by the fire.  I could smell him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Opening the door quickly, he stopped.  At some point on the way he had taken off his jacket and tie, and started unbuttoning his silk shirt.  Seeing me, the corner of his upper lip raised, and tossed his discarded clothes and eyeglasses on a chair.  “Hungry?”  Loosening his hair, he came to kneel before me, pushing his shirt back to offer his long, perfect neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There wasn’t a drop of blood or a smudge on him but I could tell he had fed.  A lot.  There were the scents of three different bloods on and in him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was starving.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But- I felt a need to, to know how much I could push.  I needed something from him, and since I would have rather bitten my own tongue out, which I was certain I could do now, than ask what he felt for me I also needed to think of something else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I like eating in bed,” I said.  “Much more comfortable.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughed at me, and at himself.  “Very well.  Shall I carry you to table, madame.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I also like to read in bed.  And I haven’t read for a long time, between being sick, and then dying, and somehow </span>
  <em>
    <span>still </span>
  </em>
  <span>being sick.  So maybe you could read to me.  I understand my favorite writer has been working on something new.  That might be nice.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The smile dropped, and I felt hollow.  I was the only person in the world who had seen the smile and I chased it away because I was scared of how I felt.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wonderful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now I knew for sure, I was the asshole in our relationship.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he smiled again, curling his lips in, trying not to, but smiling.  “Your</span>
  <em>
    <span> favorite </span>
  </em>
  <span>writer?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reader, never underestimate a writer’s vanity and insecurity, no matter how old or vain they are.  He was so pleased he didn’t even mind that the sheets were still dirty from the night before.  Which was how I knew he possibly loved me, too.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sprawled, in glorious nakedness, because as beautiful as he looked clothed he looked better in nothing, head propped on a mountain of pillows and corona’d by wild, black, black hair.  Loki put his glasses back on to read having, he said, grown so used to the affectation of them he felt more comfortable reading with them on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking over the top of the manuscript he held open, he asked, “Where are you going to feed from, </span>
  <em>
    <span>patrabavaĺny</span>
  </em>
  <span> one?  My throat will not work.  A wrist, again?”  He offered me a hand, his spidery, graceful fingers light bent towards his hard palm, the veins in his wrist swollen and luscious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I had another idea.  Get started,”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His eyebrows frowned at me, but he looked at the page and began to read, his deep, sonorous voice coloring the air like a painter’s brush.  “She lived alone, and like all beings who lived alone, at times grew desperately tired of her own company…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Taking off my robe, I crawled onto the bed, between his legs that were spread just enough to allow me in.  I stopped now and then, to draw my fingertips over the bones on the top of his feet, to pet and stroke the silky hair on his sharp shins, to nuzzle against the sides of his knees and kiss them.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His body was hot with the life of others, and I craved that nearly as much as the blood.  Ok, not really, but it was lovely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A shudder would run through him now and then, and his already hard and painful looking cock twitched and wept, so it was covered in pre-cum, but his discipline was such that his voice never ceased unspooling, smooth as silk thread.  Even when I licked up his balls to the base of his cock, and then proceeded to lick it clean.  Or tried to.  The more I tasted, the more it fed me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But I was going to need something more substantial, and as tempting as it was to bite, I wasn’t ready for that.  Though looking at the tension in his knuckles I was certain if I wanted to, Loki wouldn’t have stopped me.  Would probably never stop me from anything I wanted to do to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If I had not been starving, and sopping wet, realizing that would have made me so.  As it was, I moaned at the idea, against the thin skin of his cock, and he trembled, but kept reading.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I sank my teeth into his femoral. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His back bowed with pleasure, his voice grew deeper, less crisp, a strange accent thickened it, but he never stopped.  “The door to her apartment had a window, and from time to time she would pull back it’s old curtain and look across at her nei….”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My claws buried in his hip, his belly, so we were inseparable.  As I fed he reached down and stroked my hair, now and then clenching it in his fist, when I took a deeper pull.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I stopped listening, wrapping both of my legs about his, gently rubbing myself against it as I slowly, as slowly as I possibly could suckled from the wound I had made.  The blood, a combination of tastes and scents, was intoxicating, his voice hypnotic, and my desire grew as I teased myself.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was nothing in the world but the bed, and him, and me, the sound of his voice, and the blood that filled me.  Hot, velvety, salty mouthfuls of him, of what he had taken to provide for me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, I rolled onto my back with a contented sigh, gently rubbing a fingertip over the wounds I had left as I watched them heal, and then crawled the rest of the way, lowering myself, wet and so ready it prickled and hurt to be so empty, and filled myself with him there, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He read as I rode him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He read as I came, his voice now strained and no longer speaking in English.  He read as I touched myself and rode more and came again.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He read until the last page, and then tossed the manuscript aside, grabbed my hips, and ground me down and fucked me from below, and came and came until it leaked everywhere, and we were both done in.  Though far from done.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Love is mutually feeding each other, not one living on another like a ghoul. -- Bessie Head</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There is some reading, and the packing of boxes</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I built a fire the next night, though we did not need it and the nights were warm.  Laurel wanted it, and I did not object to its much more beautiful light gilding our bodies and the hours we were together then.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We spent a scant few days before I needed to go out again…. No, I cannot be sure of that.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps it was longer, I think it could have been no less. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I am not especially good with smaller increments of time.  They are meaningless, as is much of time itself.  Should you live long enough you will also come to recognise that time is only real to the living, and even then, only to mankind.  Oft times when I am not in company I have found myself one moment sitting down to think, staring at the gleaming night sky or a leaf with an endless river of veins, or even the whorls of wood in a wall and the next thing I know it is nearly dawn.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Were it not for the sun’s imperative, I think I could spend days lost in my own thoughts.  I am quite fascinating even to myself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Also, I am particularly not good with time when spending much of it with my cock deeply seating in a perfect, hungry cunt and with fangs breaking me open over and over - with her feeding upon me, knowing intuitively that she should not take too much at a given time, that gluttony had its place.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A glorious place that I would one day show her- but that until her infant stomach, so shrunk by her illness, learned its depth of appetite she should not overburden it.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There are horror stories I can tell you of what happens to vampires when they overindulge without the proper preparation.  Walls awash in undigested blood, the vampire holding the ruins of themself together with slippery hands, needing months or years of agony to heal, and that only if they have a thrall or companion to minister to their needs.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I myself can devour and devour without conscience </span>
  </em>
  <span>or </span>
  <em>
    <span>indigestion, though I have not done so in many years.  The last time was on the battlefields of Europe, when I gorged on Nazis until I found myself burping sauerkraut and methamphetamine.  Since then, other than petty events like three bashers that I ate to feed my Laurel, I had learned restraint and the safety it offers.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Civilization and its discontents indeed, Mr. Freud.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For those days I paid Zofia to not come to the house, so we could be alone, inseparable for every moment, not wanting to share my home with anyone but her for even the time we lay torpid and insensible, wrapped together.  I would make a point of waking first, so I could watch her open her eyes each night.  So I would be the first thing she saw.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My face hurt from so much smiling.  My nose from so much nuzzling.  My sense of dignity from being such a besotted boy.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel smiled back and nuzzled and was wise enough to not care about foolish things like dignity in the face of lo-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>In the face of what we had.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We would be in bed, facing each other, so we could watch each other, moving with a methodical slowness as I took her by the hip so I could fuck myself with her.  We would sit upon the couch in the living room, listening to music, Laurel teaching me to appreciate it even as I taught her about places deep inside that no other lover had known, loving to make her slip the leash of her own desire to dominate me, to make her submit to me and all I could give.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And then allowing her, in turn, to overcome me, as I had never let anyone before.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To free your lover from the constraints of morality, conscious thought, and determination is a delicacy and should be a privilege.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To find someone who you want to do as much for you, especially when you are an ancient monster of will and teeth, is proof that no bad deed goes unrewarded.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Soon enough I could feel our bloody idyll was nearing its end.  I was hungry, and soon she would be as well.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I had finished the first draft of the penultimate chapter of my newest work whilst Laurel sat hard by, reading the earlier chapters with a frown.  When I had shared them with her last she had been mildly distracted, missing some of the nuances of my confounding and flavorsome heroine and her peculiar situation.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What sweetly domesticated monsters!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A frown of deepest concentration flattered me as an artist, though worried me as a fabulist.  Was it too clear who this carefully dissected, examined, and denuded character was affectionately based on?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“She </span>
  </em>
  <span>is </span>
  <em>
    <span>a strange one,” Laurel murmured, turning the page.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Do you like her?” I asked in a casual tone, not looking up from the screen of my laptop.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Not really.  But I am guessing I am not supposed to.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I adore her.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She snorted, sweetly, “That’s because you made her.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Turning in my chair, I smirked at her, “And you don’t think she’s too … familiar?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Still reading, she said, “I mean, she is nothing like any of your other characters, if that’s what you mean.  And I should know.”  Looking over the top of the page, her brown eyes narrowed in thought.  “It’s good though.  She’s … I want to read about her even if I don’t like her.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My smirk grew as I turned back to my work.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Liars are the best at lying to ourselves.  Even when we don’t know it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Taking a break around three, I pulled her onto my lap, “I will have to go out soon.  Not tomorrow, but the next day certainly.  So tomorrow then I would like to move your things over into the house so you can spend my hunting time arranging a space for yourself here.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She stiffened, and before she could say anything, I assured her, “Not to sleep.  Unless you wish to.  A retreat, a private place.  Until we are able to make the house less mine and more ours.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I -” she choked on her words, and instead of telling me, she showed me how she felt.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I got no more work done that night.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In less than one night we packed my things to move them into his house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki insisted that I should take any room I liked and make it my own.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As we dressed in the evening he sat on the massive trunk at the end of his bed, his normally neat hair a bit of a mess, and even showing a hint of curl as he put on expensive jeans and a cashmere button-down shirt, his version of work clothes.  “I consider this to be our bed,” he said, running a hand over the velvet quilt, “but you should have your own space.  A place to escape the annoyance when I become...“ he cocked his head and gave me a familiar sneer, “irksome to you.  As will doubtless happen.  I have not shared my dwelling with another creature in some centuries and I have become set in my ways.  And … particular.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You?  No!  I cannot </span>
  <em>
    <span>possibly imagine</span>
  </em>
  <span> you being a fussy old man about anything…” I said, tying the laces of my running shoes, which he was currently eyeing with disgust.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even though I didn’t have much, what I had packed and hauled around with me were things I cared about and wanted to keep, which Loki understood.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What he did not understand was my wanting to keep my clothes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They are dreadful,” he said, reaching into the little closet in the apartment bedroom to take the sleeve of a black hoodie between two short, sharp fingernails, as if he were holding a cockroach that he had found in his bathtub.  “This garment.  If you were to wear it I might find my lust quenched.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.  Besides, I only wear that when I go running.” I said, snatching it from him and folding it to go into one of my two cheap suitcases.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Which you have no need of doing any longer,” he said, snatching it back to stuff in a lawn and leaf back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was so stunned by that thought, that I wouldn’t need to run, that I didn’t need to worry about my heart, or my lungs, or any of the rest of my formerly failing body.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was free of exercise forever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thank fucking God!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki took the opportunity of my staring at nothing with what was probably a brainless smile on my face to toss out the hoodie, my other shitty pair of running shoes, my winter coat, and actually most of the rest of my clothing.  The only things that found favor with him were a black and green plaid pencil skirt I used to wear on stage, three black silk blouses that I had bought at a going out of business sale at some boutique, two pairs of jeans, a black leather jacket, and the one pair of knee-high boots I had that cost me the earth when I was in college and that I told myself I would be buried in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And a garter belt with a pair of black silk stockings that I forgot I had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That should be enough until we can get you some proper clothing,” he said.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You threw out all of my bras!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking at my chest, he shrugged, “They </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>more of an affectation than a requirement in your case…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, before I could curse him out for being 100% correct, or dive into the bag to save more of my clothing, Loki wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me flush with him, whispering and smiling against my lips, “Please allow me to outfit you, </span>
  <em>
    <span>moj skarb</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it would make me so happy.”  After a slow kiss, he brushed his mouth on my earlobe, nicking it slightly with a fang, “I promise to be less … high-handed than you might have reason to expect.  I shall make no purchase without your approval.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was nervous.  I hadn’t really thought beyond not dying to what my life would be like as a vampire.  To what I would do to support myself, but being a leech of another kind wasn’t in me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have to spen-”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have more resources than I could use, even with my lavish lifestyle.”  Stepping back, he took the full garbage bag, walked to the kitchen and tossed it out of the door.  “You would be astonished at the economies possible when one does not require food, or drink, or heat and much electricity for that matter.  Additional to my revenue on my books and investments, I have kept all of my stories in copyright and a number of them have been made into films.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” I said, having seen most of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So let me do as I wish,” he reached out and flicked my nose, “and you shall find me a most docile monster, content to do your bidding for all time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine,” I grumbled, not because I didn’t have a choice but because things like clothing mattered a great deal more to him than to me.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And I liked the idea of seeing what bidding I could have him do….</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had a handful of photos and pictures in frames to take down, my record collection, which had been pointless since I had no turntable but I couldn’t bear to be parted from them, my guitar that I hadn’t played in years, and a few other things.  Since I wouldn’t be needing to cook or drink anything that didn’t come from a person or a plastic bag I put everything in the kitchen into a box to donate, except for a mug from Graceland.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>None of it took long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, there were my books.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All I could think was how thankful I was that Loki was so strong.  I could make him carry them all.  That would be my first bidding.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It made me laugh to think of it, and to realize that I could bid him to do so much more and he would do it all.  With little more than a smirk.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wondered what I would have to think of, how depraved I would have to get, before I shocked him, and I wondered if I wanted to shock him enough to reach those depths?  I had always been a good person, even when I was a bad girl, but immortality was a long time.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mentally shrugging, I knew that I had a century or two before I started to get bored, at least. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking at Loki, at his stern frown and the long body that loved to fall apart for me, I knew it would probably be longer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We filled so many boxes, and though I tried to get to the shelves that held his books - the ones he wrote as Laufeyson, the ones he wrote under so many other names - he was still faster than I.  With the ease of experience, he effortlessly filled box after box, while I dithered and spent moments flipping through pages, looking at the ephemera that had collected in them, wondering if there were empty shelves in the house that I could appropriate, when I noticed out of the corner of my eye he had stopped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After sitting cross-legged on the floor to get the books on the bottom shelves, he had stopped and was holding one of them, open to the title page.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Held in his thin, spidery fingers, the third book in the unofficial trilogy that started with </span>
  <em>
    <span>Book of Liars</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Preservation.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>His best works, even better than some of those he wrote in the 19th century that were considered classics of Scandanavian literature, in my opinion, which is the only one either of us cared about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though his head was bent far enough over that his hair hid his face, its ends pooled on the page, I could still make out the thick ink, scrawled in a near calligraphic hand, and though it could not be read as it was obscured by loose curls that were the same shade of black, what it said, and how his elegant words looked, were burned into me.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“For Laurel, </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The way she listened was more eloquent than speech, </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Loki.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Closing it, then holding the slender volume up between two fingers, he cocked his head and looked at me with one raised brow.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Taking it, I put it in the box I was packing, “Weird, right?  I saw it on Alibris and I thought it was such a coincidence that I had to have it.  Wasn’t cheap, by the way.  You should be flattered.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lifting the hand that had taken the book from him, which I am proud to say was not shaking, Loki kissed the back of it, the palm, my fingertips, and where the pulse would have been in my wrist, had I been alive.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It would have been racing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So very flattered. So very, very flattered.  It is </span>
  <em>
    <span>almost</span>
  </em>
  <span> as if it were meant for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pulling me down in a jumble of limbs, our long bodies not fitting in the closet I had made my library, we stretched through the door and into the hallway.  Loki made quick work of my pants, not bothering with anything else, rubbing agile fingertips on my clit and he smiled cruelly at me, watching my writhe, wanting me to bed, only to grow impatient and loosen his belt.  With an ironic look down he told me to unbutton him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His cock was hard and cool and he barely let me touch it before he fucked into me. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Normally even with him, with his beautiful body and sure touch, I take a bit more than being taken hard to make me come.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe it was my pleasure at almost being caught.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At knowing I was caught.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At knowing we would keep lying to each other and never let the truth get in the way of our needs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it took little more than his breaching me to make me howl, digging my claws into his back so deep that afterward as we lay, both licking my fingers, I wondered if my landlord would charge me for getting the bloodstains out of the shitty carpet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With great seriousness he responded, “I am certain his deeply altruistic nature would mean he would be willing to take it out in trade.”  Then he stared into my eyes and suckled my fingers until my hips jerked up, helpless, as if he were fucking me already.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If I needed to breathe, I would have panted as I asked, “And what, sir, would that mean?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He spent most of the rest of the night showing me, so we barely had time to get my things into the kitchen of the house and scramble up the stairs like anxious cats, eager to be stripped and in bed before the sun rose.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p><br/><br/>e.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Evil is an act, not an appetite.  -  Gregory Maguire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Loki decides Laurel has to learn to fend for himself.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I indulged Laurel for as long as I could, and perhaps longer than was safe. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For the first time in my death I found myself concerned for my safety when I hunted.  Whilst having no wish to not exist, I grew up in a warrior culture, a pirate culture, a time and place where lives were fast and short, filled with violence, and no one expected to die in bed, lest it was when they were screaming in pain, or shuddering away their last moments in a much-dreaded fever.  But in those days of idyll with Laurel I felt concern.  No, that is a lie of omission, and with you, here, I have vowed honesty, loathing it as I do.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>feared</span>
  <em>
    <span>.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I feared that I would meet a true hunter on one of those dark, plague-ridden streets, though their kind is far rarer than ours.  I feared that some accident, a bit of bad luck by picking a victim who might manage to harm me too much to return home before the sun came up.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I feared that she would waste away, suffering, waiting for me, unable to fend for herself...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Though there was an undeniable pleasure in it for me, to share her with no other, knowing that I alone would experience the agonising bliss of her fangs deep in me, my shudders wracking both of us, knowing that I alone filled her veins.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Knowing that we were entwined as a Gordian knot, never to be undone, even as she unraveled me again and again and I happily allowed that unraveling, undoing her in turn, when she </span>
  </em>
  <span>thought </span>
  <em>
    <span>she was sated.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But it could not go on forever.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The summer passed, both mild and manic, for Covid still walked those streets as well, though the humans tried to pretend she was not amongst them.  Yet she was there, peering over the shoulders of new brides as they sliced their cakes, drawing a boney finger through the frosting.  Photobombing group pictures from beaches and clubs and so, so many parties.  All but spitting in the faces of those forced by economic need and cruel circumstances to work in situations where they could not refuse to serve those who felt that their desire to flaunt their meaningless freedoms was of more significance than life itself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then fall came and all but the dimmest, most self-involved, and greedy knew that they had overstepped.  And so the world grew quieter, again, though not so quiet as it should have.  Humans are impatient.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One of those colder nights, possibly in early November, possibly not, I woke very early.  Behind the new, heavy shutters I had put up in the bedroom in an excess of caution, I could feel the pressure of the light, the sun having not set entirely yet.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I realized I had woken because Laurel had gotten out of bed and was standing near those closed shutters, her long, naked body was strong now and cherished by the darkness, the pallid fug of illness that had hung about her fully banished by time, rest, proper nourishment.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And death, the greatest panacea of them all.  There are no bodily harms it cannot cure.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her fingertips were on the latch of the shutters.  “What are you doing?” I tried to sound lazy, sleepy, anything but terrified.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For a few moments, Laurel continued to look at nothing as she seemed not to hear me, and as she did she tapped a long, blue-painted nail on the metal of the hook that was all that separated her from burning, staring at nothing, rapt in some way that I could not parse.  At one point it caught under the hook and I was certain she was about to lift it.  Old as I am, the little light that would enter would do me no more harm than a recently blown out match touched to living flesh.  A flash of pain and a touch of ash.  No more.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But she would flare and be gone, leaving only an oily burn upon my hardwood floor. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then she turned and smiled at me.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You said I would know when I heard the stars?  I think I heard the sun.”  Climbing back into bed, she curved against my side, her bent leg on my thigh, her fingertips, painfully heated from the sun-warmed metal of the latch, stroking the meagre few hairs on my chest.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What did it sound like?” I asked, resisting the urge to clutch her close.  Being alone had been an easy habit for me to break with her and I feared would be an impossible one to take up again.  I had never heard the sun, and I did not know what it meant that she could.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After considering, she answered, “Slow.  Imperturbable.  Steady.  Not like something made up of roiling fires colliding with each other, but of something moving calmly and seems grandly unconcerned by anything but its own motion through space.”  She lifted her head and kissed me on the nose, which is a thing she did from time to time which I found confusing but pleasant, “It sounds like the way you … vibrate.  You and the sun are clearly very much alike.  Dangerous and secretly chaotic as fuck.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She could hear the sun, and soon she would hear the farther stars.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She was fully formed, save for one thing and it could no longer be put off, for her safety and my peace of mind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then she stretched and said something about going shower.  I wanted to wrap my arms around her bare torso, to pull her down and roll atop her, touching her as completely as I could.  Who would have thought being known would be such an intoxicant?  Rather, I watched her go, and lay with my hands laced beneath my head, staring at nothing as I plotted how to persuade her to come out at night with me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And how I could teach her to hunt without causing her to be remade by the act, so she would not curse me for making her monstrous and not merely a monster.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Loki gently tried to bring up my learning to hunt again.  As gentle as he could be.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even though I didn’t want to, I knew I was being selfish making him responsible for all of my care and feeding.  I had always hated being looked after, not supporting myself, not being able to be independent even while with someone.  Over time I had come to hate it more than I was horrified by the idea of hunting.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe I had gotten used to the blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe I wanted to start to even out what I knew would always be a lopsided relationship.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe I was just getting bored of being in all of the time, now that I felt good again.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I told him that I would be willing to learn to hunt starting on Halloween.  And yes, I picked that night because I thought it was funny.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Since he was convinced it was November for some reason, despite spending a good part of each night on the computer working on the edit of his book so he could have just looked at the date, he was briefly angry with me for trying to put it off for a year.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or till next week.”  I pointed to the date and time in the lower corner of his laptop, “How did you live this long being bone-headed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am exceedingly beautiful,” he muttered, pushing his pointless glasses back up his nose and going back to writing.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It couldn’t be argued.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he didn’t mention it again for several days.  I knew that he was nervous that I would change my mind.  That he could somehow talk me out of it if he wasn’t careful.  Loki was always careful about those things he bothered to care about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to go to that gross, bouji club again,” I said on October 30th, as we sat on the front porch.  The trees had turned golden and orange, and with my new sight they burned against the pearly black sky.  It was rare that fall was as advertised by Pinterest and car commercials, but this one had all of that flamboyant, if slightly sad, splendor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Halloween was going to be on a Saturday.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki was going to have Sofia come over and hand out candy until sunset.  He lived in a very Halloweenish sort of house - entirely by accident I am </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure </span>
  </em>
  <span>- and with Covid, and the beautiful autumn, and the Saturday, I wanted any kids out trick or treating to get the thrill of coming to </span>
  <em>
    <span>the </span>
  </em>
  <span>house. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>We were giving out full-sized bars and fancy little plastic skulls with eyes that flashed green if you pressed a button on the back.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When I ordered everything online, he had looked over my shoulder, bemused.  “I did not take you for one so taken with the young, </span>
  <em>
    <span>min kona</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he said, frowning.  “Are there really that many types of chocolate candy now?  To what purpose?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Marketing,” I answered, “I am not especially into kids.  They are fine.  But the band I used to be in always played a show on Halloween.  I kind of miss it.”  Then I added a gross of glow in the dark vampire fangs to the order to see what he would do.  I turned and looked up at his frown, “Did you ever have any chi-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stopped my mouth with a kiss and picked me up and carried me to the couch by the cold fireplace, and again I forgot to ask him what that pet name was he kept calling me, but luckily I did remember to place the order.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, the night before the day, I wasn’t missing it at all.  I was very much wishing that when I woke up the next night Halloween would somehow have disappeared right off of the calendar and it was November 1st and I would have a year before I had to consider going out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hunting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hurting someone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe killing them.  Because to my everlasting comfort and joy, Loki had mentioned that the majority of vampire kills were from the young, new to hunting, excited by bloodlust, overcome and not being able to stop themselves from going too far.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did that happen to you?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.  I was already a killer before I was turned, as well as being mad in both senses of the word, so it was a massacre rather than a solitary murder.”  Though he spoke with a bored tone he was squeezing the wood of the porch rail hard enough to make the wood creak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wonderful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually we went to bed, Loki making excruciating love to me.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After seating me on the edge of the bed he knelt to take off my shoes, carefully picking the bows apart with his spidery fingers, and then pushing up my pant legs so he could slowly roll down each sock, stilling me with a slitted eye, poison green and icy, when I tried to help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t touched my skin at all in the process but I was ready to jump out of it anyway.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is tak-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His voice was crisp, “If I require anything other than your willing compliance I shall inform you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he bent back to his task.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After I was naked, and he still dressed, he touched me.  The barest tips of those refined fingers stroking my back, and down my arms, then up my calves.  On the backs of my thighs, a place I was very sensitive, he used his claws, still as light and much slower, until I writhed and he had to pin me in place with a hard palm flat across the small of my back.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leaning down, he whispered, close, threatening, assured, “Still yourself.  Now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That voice spoke to my body, bypassing my mind, and my muscles stopped.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he had finished, he traced over those delicate, invisible scrapes with his dry, soft lips, and then his cold, licking tongue, speaking old Norse all the while, again giving me orders that somehow my body understood even without knowing a word of it.  To bend my knee, to bend it higher, to slid my own hand between my legs, and to touch myself - swollen and sopping and achingly open - while he watched, to stop when my hips started to move without my knowing it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Loki cupped me there, only that, while he lay beside me until I calmed down.  “Watch,” he said, lifting that hand to his lips, lapping from it like a cat, as he palmed himself through the thin wool of his trousers, which hid nothing of him.  “If I could live on this I would, min kona.  I would take no other nourishment, nor want for it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were tears in my eyes - both of frustration and of tenderness - when he rolled me onto my back, and he drank those, too.  “I would devour you if I could.  Truly, utterly, so that we would be entrapped absolutely.  But then,” he spread my legs, wider and wider, tickling there, teasing, making me start to beg only to put a finger to his lips and say “Shhhh…” in a snake’s hiss and only taking out his cock, still fully dressed, he slowly, slowly, slowly sliding into me, when my fangs descended and I no longer knew what I wanted, only that he alone could give it to me.  “I would miss fucking you so … and I deny myself nothing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I stuttered sounds, not able to speak as every overstimulated part of me was brushed by cashmere, silk, wool, skin that was finer than any of them, hair that trailed like webs over my face and breast, a mouth that knew every word, every trick, and used them against my neck, my mouth, my shoulders.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>By then I was wild, and I tried to bite, I wanted to reach bone, to make him as mad, as I was, knowing my suck, my body growing hot with his blood, was his special needy pleasure.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One of his large hands grasped a fistful of my short hair, pulling my head back, and for the first time in weeks he bit me instead.  Rather than drinking, he kept his fangs deep in my neck, holding me still, immobile.  The exquisite, shaking pain of it and the intense, slow pleasure from where he fucked me with a metronome’s exactness only to suddenly turn hard and rough, leaving me raw, met somewhere in my mind, blending and becoming one overwhelming moment.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>My first orgasm was as deep as it was massive, and because I could not move, I could not ride it out, could not move through it, could only endure it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As it started, he loosed his fangs and sucked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I disappeared, obliterated by him, only be brought back by his tongue, agility, delicately, soothing between my legs.  Looking up briefly, his expression blandly serious, “You are not escaping me tonight so lightly scathed.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel Laurel, min kona, my love, my sweetheart, my darling, my queen, my thing needful above all others, I should have kept you in that bed for a year and a day.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>We woke to the sound of Sofia’s voice outside.  “One of each, each!  Only one!  American children!  Gimme gimme gimme.  Go on you little jackals.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was said with a gruff affection that the children ignored in their lust for chocolate and plastic junk, while the parents laughed, agreeing and proud.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beside me Loki was even stiller than normal.  He looked like the effigies they placed on the tops of king’s tombs in the Middle Ages.  Finally, he asked, “Are you ready?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“To get up and give out candy for another hour until curfew? Sure.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Laurel…” his voice had a warning note.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I nodded, and even if he wasn’t looking at me he knew.  I was as ready as I could be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I would like to share with you the absurd delight of Loki handing out Three Musketeers and Almond Joys, and bags of M&amp;M and Kit Kats.  Dropping little toy skulls, and especially those teeth into plastic, grinning pumpkins and orange bags with black cats and witches in silhouette on them.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>How offended his dignity would have been by it.  Standing there, expressionless and stick straight, holding the heavy iron cauldron filled with candy - he had purchased it himself, refusing to have one of the plastic ones sullying his house.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Growing more and more annoyed with me for laughing at him, because I would have.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe he didn’t do it.  Maybe he refused, having gone far enough to allow strangers onto his normally pristine property.   Stomping his grass.  Mudding his portico.   Perhaps he sat inside, impatient, as I answered the door time after time, pretending to read even as he stared at me over the top of his book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I would tell you but I don’t remember any of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That memory, one that I am sure I would love to have, is gone as completely as if it had never been.  Over time, over so much time, I have come to remember everything else, but that is lost to me and I don’t think it will ever come back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ripped away by teeth.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Washed away by a sea of blood.  </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. It’s quite a thing, to experience that urge, to let it wash over you, to give in to it. It’s addictive. It’s all-consuming. You lose yourself to it. - Derek Landy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Things go wrong.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was a beautiful night, capping what had been a beautiful autumn.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Do you remember?  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Of course, you don’t, it was so long ago and…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was a beautiful night, you may take my word for it.  Crisp is the term Americans like to use for their autumn nights and all triteness aside it is apt for a night such as that one.  The neighborhood had put on its best face for the sake of the young, about to be trapped again by winter and the rising number of the sick and the dead.  Just as in </span>
  </em>
  <span>my</span>
  <em>
    <span> childhood days.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ah, nostalgia.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For more hours than usual for Halloween, the doorbell rang, and at some of the neighbor’s homes they had set up fire pits in the yards so they could sit in the cooling, darkening air with candy offerings.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If I should say it reminded me of the past I would be lying.  The noisomeness of the petroleum and synthetics that either made or infected all but the most remote or zealously guarded places in the world, added to light pollution, and the constant noise of transformers, engines, and human nattering made it impossible for me to even pretend I had retreated into the peaceful horrors of the past.  Still, the woodsmoke was rather nice.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laurel was growing restless.  There is something terribly mortal about once you know a grim task must be undertaken, to then wish to rush towards it.  When you have little time there truly is no way to put things off.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her hands flexed and squeezed, she brushed her hair more than was her wont, which is to say more than once, and she refused to meet my eyes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was not agitated, not anxious.  I was cold.  Colder than I had been since she had come to me to find a place to live. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There are those undead who can tell you the provenance and past of an object with a brush of their fingers.  The rarest of my kind are those who see glimpses of the future, who have survived so long that they are able to defy the linear way that our minds organize time.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My own gifts, as you know by now, are for touching the minds of others, and they have grown as I have aged to the point where it is at times harder to </span>
  </em>
  <span>not</span>
  <em>
    <span> use them.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Never had I shown such prescience, but I was very old, and that night a thing I could not name chilled me.  Which chilled me further.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For I know the name for everything.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Finally, the voices faded, the smoke dissipated leaving the comfortable scent of wet, charred wood in its place, the cold reached its peak, and we went out. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After I made Laurel change her clothes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” she asked, looking down at herself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Put on something black.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She raised an eyebrow at me, “Isn’t that kind of on the nose, Vlad?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was in no mood for levity, “Black will hide the stains.  And there will be stains.  No child eats neatly the first time it holds its own knife.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“That’s usually a spoon,” she said.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When no banter was forthcoming she retreated to our room and then came back in a black sweater and trousers.  “Better?  I always thought it was weird when couples dress alike, ”  Laurel held her hands out at her sides, frowning at my own, similar attire.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I nodded, holding open the door, “Let’s go.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We drove in silence, searching for a demesne within it.  A place where the disease was being treated with negligent disrespect, as would another’s hunting ground.  Laurel rolled the window down and leaned an elbow on the door, her hand on her chin, her short hair blown back.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now and then she would close her eyes, raising her chin to the wind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Would that I had skill with paint to preserve what she looked like to me that night, for even I do not have the words.  Only the memory.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Eventually, we found a place.  It does not matter any longer where the place was, or who was there that I deemed worthy of predation.   </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I first became I fed like a beast because I was little better than a beast before that turning, starving and empty.  I thought this was because I had been bled and abandoned, because I was not guided or taught.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I had taught Laurel everything I could think of in those nights before I took her out, making her repeat her lessons until they were rote.  I stayed by her side, attentive and cautious as any she-wolf with one pup and a long winter ahead.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was cold as we walked through the night.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was wrong about everything.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I killed him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man.  One of the men who had wanted to ‘play’ with us.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki had caught him, bled him, so fast I could barely see.  The chase through the streets and into the little park that smelled of freezing dirt and dog shit having left me edgy, with something horrible and burning in place of the adrenalin I no longer had that was making my senses spike, even as my body remained inert and dead.  Then there was blood and-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One moment he was a man, and the next he was just… food.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A spigot of food.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was nothing that mattered, other than bountiful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had sprung on him, the heels of my boots digging into his sides, biting so hard at his neck that I took a chunk out of it, which I spat away as I rode him, grey and clammy with shock, blood soaking my chin, my clothes, giving me hot mouthful after mouthful.  I could not drink fast enough to keep up with the surge of it.  So unlike drinking from Loki, where no heart, no lungs, made the blood move.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Full of fear.  It was full of fear, and life.  It tasted of his dying as I drank and drank, not caring about the mess I made.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was so hot.  Boiling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then it started to get cold.  I didn’t like that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I could smell heat from somewhere else and threw his body aside.  I don’t remember catching the second man, the one who ran.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I drank from him through his death, even as Loki shouted, wrapping his arms around my waist, trying to pull me away the blood started to cool so quickly and my talons locked into the corpse, so when I was lifted I brought the body with me, still latched and sucking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thinking back, I imagine it could have looked funny.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was grotesque.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enough!” Loki roared in my ear.  My maker’s voice.  My sinews stiffened, halting, unable to even blink.  The body fell away from me.  He had been large and there was a hard, breaking crack as his head hit the corner of the brick building we were beside.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Where had the building come from?  We were in a park.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Loki clutched my unmoving body to him for a few moments, then set me down, “Enough…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A sigh, and I was free.  Taking a step, I nearly fell, tripping over something large and soft.  Loki caught my arm.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then I realized, I hadn’t only killed the first man.  And it was not the same night.  And we were not in the same part of the city.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I looked at my hands.  They were covered in half-healed burns.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He squatted, snagging his hands through his hair over and over, pulling it out of its braid, rocking slightly on his heels, his beautiful face perfectly blank.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What happened?”  I asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shook his head, and then stood, taking my disgusting hand in his with no sign of flinching.  “Let us go home.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It took me three nights to find her.  The Wanderer alone knows where she hid by day, her instincts ruling all she might have dug into the earth to stay away from the sun, or climbed into a dumpster.  She was so covered in clots and filth anything was possible. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The next afternoon, late, late in the afternoon when it was almost still light, I couldn’t make myself stay asleep.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Vampires don’t dream.  Loki doesn’t know why, but it’s true.  “What we have instead are memories.  Eventually, in our torpor everything returns to us.  Sometimes the memories are so old they feel like dreams, because the one who made those memories is so far gone from you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had not been dead that long. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I remembered what I did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I remembered.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I deserved to be dead.  I deserved to have died the miserable death I tried to spare myself.  I was no more important than anyone else and I had done terrible things, and I still wanted to live, but I -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I smelled Sofia’s blood.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Were Sofia not wise, were the door to pantry not old and thick with iron hinges, were I not fast, were Laurel not struggling, driving her fists over and over into the ceramic tiles of the kitchen floor, breaking both them and her own bones as she tried to resist the blood call -</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You must understand that Laurel did fight it.  Far more than I did.  The burns on her hands and the ones she did not see on her face came from trying to face the sun rather than harm anyone else, though her desire to live always made her shy away into the dark before it could happen.  The damage to her ruined fingers as she gouged them into the walls to try and hold herself back from the killing.  She did these things and more to fight but it did no good.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I held her, sitting on the couch, rocking her like a fretful child as she sobbed against me, alternating between self-hate and what felt like starvation to her but was merely appetite.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sofia never came back, of course.  I sent her a large severance and told her I would continue to pay her monthly if she vowed to keep quiet.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sofia was a practical woman, and had seen plenty of terrors, she accepted.  I missed her presence in my home, but I miss so many things.  What was one more?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After that I rested little, afraid of what Laurel would do.  Please understand that several weeks passed and she grew no better.  Raving and violent, she would try to escape the house, tossing the blood I purchased for her away saying it tasted bitter, spurning me, then biting me, savaging me.  I opened my arms to her every time.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The first time the Good Doctor came to deliver he started to open his mouth, to make a sarcastic or gloating observation when Laurel’s wail of hunger came from the basement where I had shackled her to the wall for his protection.  He took his money in silence, and after that sent an underling with my supplies.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As those exhausting weeks passed, as I grew weary, and Laurel was no better I researched what little could be found that was factual about our kind and discovered, to little surprise, nothing of help.  Over the years since, I have found more and more evidence that certain lines of our kind are afflicted more than others with a bloodlust that takes decades to tame.  The bloodline we are from is especially dark.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Of course. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That I turned in a dark and bloody time, with dark nights and humans with no help at hand so often, meant I could rave and rage and eat and be a monster and slink away into the nothingness and wilderness between settlements and towns.  Because I was a killer before my turning, my heart was already calloused to the pain.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My Laurel, min kona, was not.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She was only a woman who was afraid to die, who was young, and who I loved.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Who loved me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At times, her eyes would clear, and she would shake, “I still don’t want to die.  But you can’t let me hurt anyone else.  You have to kill me, if I try to.  You have to, if you love me you have to.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I stroked her hair, because in those moments she would allow it, and lied to her that I would.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And also, in a manner of speaking, told the truth.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then she buried her face against my neck and cried and cried, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.  I’m so scared.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You will judge me, certainly.  Feel free, but do not for a moment assume that what I did I came to easily, or was easy to do, or was done without dreadful fear and awareness of how it would resonate.  If I should have my way you will never be lonely enough for long enough, you will never want for another for so very long that you would have to consider such a dreadful thing.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One night deep, deep into the winter, I had managed to persuade her to eat enough that she fell into torpor.  Enforcing it with my will, I kept her that way.  She was so tired then, almost as tired as she had been living that she gave me no fight at all.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then, with care and so, so slowly, more slowly than stones erode to start and then with a little more speed as the touch of my mind grew confident, I began to cut her memories away.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And placed them deep within me, where they would be safe.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
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